


Something Done Right

by candyvan



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Argent Vs Hale, Canon-Typical Violence, Cat&Mouse Game, Corruption, Detective Allison, Detectives, F/F, Faux Gritty Like A DC Comic, Hale Family Mob, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Mafia AU, Mind Games, Mobster Hale Family, Noncanon Character Death, Organized Crime, Police Procedural, Power Dynamics, Prostitution, Sex Trafficking, The Argent Family, canon character death, plot heavy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2019-03-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 11:40:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14810664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/candyvan/pseuds/candyvan
Summary: Allison’s a detective working the case of her career when she meets Lydia, a troubled girl she just can’t stay away from.- - -“Surely you’ve learned that by now, right?” She smiles. “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [allyasavestheday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/allyasavestheday/gifts).



> This fic possesses me tbqh?? It's different from what I usually write but here you go <3
> 
> Thanks to Emily, who puts up with my endless teasing, and to Calyx for simply existing and being in my life.
> 
> If anything in here is wrong or offensive, please don't hesitate to let me know. This is delicate subject matter. I can do all the research I want and still miss something. Thank you for your help!

  
  


There’s a girl on the corner of the street.

It’s not rare, considering this part of town. In fact, it would be more unusual to _not_ see someone there, desperate to survive. Allison’s never understood it, the urgency, the need, the frantic grasp for life. She’s grown up hearing stories of it, of course. Victoria was always quick to remind her that things can always be worse.

Despite the hardships of her life, Allison’s family has always been comfortable and content with their wealth. That’s not to say her life has been without tragedy, but there has been nothing so severe to have ever led her to a street corner in a bad neighborhood after midnight, wearing clothes most people would blush at.

During her rookie days, when the precinct was slow and the coffee was burnt and the piles of paperwork seemed close to toppling over on her, Allison would talk to the girls other officers had brought in. She would ask them their names, listen to their stories, and ask if there’s anyone she could call for them.

“There’s no one who’d want to hear anything,” they’d always say, eyes dry even though Allison could hear their heart breaking a little bit more in their chests.

When she got fast-tracked to detective, there was less downtime to ask, but Allison never forgot. Sometimes, she remembers their names as she’s trying to sleep, counts the many tragedies that exist in this rotten town, and cries.

It’s one of the reasons why she’s had to turn down the many job offers from the Sex Crimes division. That, and her father would have a fit if she transferred out of Gerard’s precinct. Allison knows she could do good work there, almost wants the chance to try but, secretly, she thinks it would eat her alive, consuming her until she is nothing but a husk. There’s a hole inside her heart from seeing the cruel injustices of the world firsthand; she doesn’t think she would survive the constant bombardment of the brutal reality so many people have to live.

She needs to focus on her case instead of fantasizing about ridding the world of putrid scum. Kate is probably rolling in her grave at the thought of Allison turning her back on the chance to bring down the Hales.

Still, she finds herself watching the girl.

She thinks she’s seen her around once or twice, which is a comfort in some small way. Allison’s heart always aches when she realizes how long it’s been since she’s seen a familiar face.

Allison’s not supposed to be watching the girl, though. She’s nestled in a three-story motel that charges by the hour, lights off and camera on. Down across the street, her inside man is supposed to be meeting with Derek Hale.

It’s just the first meeting, nothing special, but it’s important to get pictures and establish a paper trail timeline nevertheless. The less she leaves to chance is always good. Allison’s had to see too many guilty perps walk just because someone mislabeled evidence.

Thankfully, everything's been going according to plan so far. Liam has to be vetted by the muscle of the Hale family, one of Peter’s best lieutenants, before he’s allowed to consider meeting with Princess Cora, the underboss who manages the organization while Peter is otherwise occupied. Peter rarely shows his face. It’s why he’s so hard to pin down. 

Allison and Liam go back almost a year to when she caught him with enough cocaine to put him away for intent to sell. Normally, Allison would wring him for all he could give her and then let a uniformed officer take him in for processing, but there was something about Liam that made her take a second glance.

Maybe it was the desperate look in his eye, the taunt in his voice as she cuffed him, or just how _young_ he looked to her aging eyes, but it made her hesitate long enough to convince herself to take a chance.

When she released him from the silver cuffs, she promised to turn a blind eye as long as he worked as her ear to the ground. He wasn’t her only informant, but he was definitely her favorite. They met under a bridge once a month and Liam told her a whisper every time she passed him a Benjamin.

Her intuition, as usual, was correct; in the time she’s known him, Liam has risen from the lowly title of soldier to one of Satomi’s youngest lieutenants. He’s on the lowest rung, the outer edge of the inner circle, but the position still wields an incredible amount of power.

Last month, Liam was frantic, eyes rimmed red and hands shaking like he needed a fix, twitching like he hadn’t since Allison helped him get clean months before. Word on the street was the Hales had taken an interest in him, which is exactly what Allison was hoping for.

Peter wants to stretch his control from Beacon County farther north, eager to seize control of the belt of southern Oregon that is infamous for meth heads itching for a product as pure as Hale’s. He’s been slowly creeping across the county line inch by inch over the past few years.

There’s one thing standing in the way of Hale’s complete and total control: Satomi Ito. To pull it off, he needs to know who Satomi’s supplier is to cut her off at the source. To do that, he needs to woo an inside man to his side.

Enter Liam. It’s a simple set up. Poor Liam is just a pawn caught in a pissing match between two rival families.

Stiles Stilinski is the officer overseeing the Satomi family opposite of her, and Allison knows he would want to arrest her for even thinking about compromising his own investigation like this. She should have brought Liam to Stiles as soon as she found out who he worked for. Instead, she selfishly kept one of Satomi’s lieutenants for herself.

Whatever. Stiles could never understand.

Though he comes from a family of cops himself, Stiles’s life is completely different. Allison once saw her coworker as an ally, someone to gripe to and commiserate her own misery. That was before she met his dad and learned the truth.

Sheriff Stilinski loves his son for who he is, not the lineage he represents. Stiles became a cop because he wanted to, not because it was expected of him. He doesn’t have to experience the constant worry Allison does. He doesn’t have Captain Gerard Argent breathing down his neck every day, demanding updates on an investigation not even Kate could close.

Thoughts of Kate hurt too much to bear. Allison readjusts the focus of her camera, keeping Liam safely in her eye-line.

She tries not to feel bad for Liam, knows he’s just a kid with not enough options in a cruel world. She doesn’t have the strength to feel for his plight right now, not when she needs to be distant to use him to her advantage. If they take down the Hale organization, they can save countless of future kids just like him from having to make the same tough decisions.

If Peter Hale takes full command of the west coast, that’s it. There will be too much damage and not enough control. Allison will be spread too thin to bring him down. They might have to beg the department to put together a specialized task force, might have to hand the case over the bureau or the DEA, but even that won’t be enough to stop the family who has eluded them for over fifteen years. It could even be longer, knowing just how slippery they are.

This is a fork in the road, potentially one of the biggest nights of Allison’s career, the start of her victory, a domino falling, triggering every move after; she can’t afford to be distracted.

And yet, like a magnet, her eyes keep drifting from the warehouse to the girl, smacking gum between her pink lips without a care in the world. She’s wearing a thin shirt two sizes too small, cut to reveal the plum bralette that peeks out from underneath. Her hair calls to any passerbyers like a flame, promising to burn you so sweetly you’ll deny the relief of water just for the warmth of her.

Watching her, Allison remembers where she’s seen her before, always out of the corner of her eye as she roamed for witnesses and investigated rumors. Whoever she is, the girl’s been working this street for months, and Allison’s slowly become painfully aware of her existence.

It’s the girl’s job to be a magnet but never before has Allison been so easily drawn into someone’s orbit. She hates this loss of control, especially _now_ of all times.

She absently debates calling a squad car to come pick her up, but dismisses the idea as soon as it forms. She’s not going to ruin some poor girl’s night just because Allison can’t control herself. Besides, Derek Hale has a history of being easily spooked.

Better safe than sorry has always been the Hale motto. Laura was always more involved, not one to shy away from the grunt work of running such an organization. Low-level soldiers would always speak of her in awe, amazed that someone as high up as her wasn’t afraid to get her hands dirty right alongside them. She must have gotten bored of the limelight, or maybe Peter’s told her to make herself as much of a shadow as the rest of them; no one’s seen her in years. Allison has only ever seen one picture of Cora Hale, and it was just a silhouette through a tinted car window. All she knows about Peter himself is that he has a devilish goatee and icy blue eyes.

She’s chasing ghosts.

A car pulls up that shouldn’t be in this side of town, a shiny black Camaro with windows tinted a few shades darker than regulation allows. It stops, idling against the curb for a long minute, watching the street for any sign of danger.

Allison waits, taut like a string, for Derek Hale to emerge. Her lungs still, afraid to create even the smallest shift of movement to trigger him to run.

The back door opens and Allison begins taking pictures, thankful for the streetlamps that provide just enough light to get shot after shot of Derek’s face. He’s the most well known of the Hales after Laura, but the grunts don’t talk about him with anywhere near the same amount of awe. If anything, they all seem to only respect him out of fear.

While there are quite a few murders Allison’s intuition screams belong to Derek, he mainly deals with the soldiers and the underlings. He’s the one people tell her about when she brings them into the station; after hours and hours of tireless questioning, they all eventually cough up his name.

The problem is, he’s clean. All she has on him are words from the scum of society and whispers from homeless drug users who can never give her anything concrete. There’s no proof, no paper trail to follow, no one of high enough rank to sell him out. That’s the issue with every Hale in the organization. They’ve been doing this for far too long. They’ve lined the pockets of almost every judge and political official who can take them down. They’re all too smart.

Even after a fire destroyed half of their elite inner circle of family, they kept quiet and kept their heads down. If they got retribution, which Allison doesn’t doubt they did, they did it without even a blip on the BHPD’s radar.

It’s infuriating. It’s vile. It’s not going to go on for any longer if Allison has anything to say about it.

A second car pulls up, stopping farther down the street. The girl smiles, flirts, and walks forward with her hips swaying like a pendulum.

After a second of back and forth, the girl eagerly climbs into the passenger seat. It pulls away, letting Allison finally breathe a sigh of relief.

She zooms in, watches through the open warehouse door as Liam holds out a hand to greet Hale. She relaxes when she sees it’s not shaking.

Finally, Allison can get to work.

* * *

The next time she sees Liam, he’s wearing better clothes. They’re tailored to his body, which has noticeably gone from stringy and underfed to something resembling normal.

Allison tilts down her sunglasses to stare at him; he smirks, happy as a clam in the dark slacks and soft, silk maroon shirt.

“You like? Derek said I had to look the part if I was going to meet the lieutenants,” he says, gesturing to his outfit. The shirt he’s wearing probably cost more than he normally makes in a year.  “If they like what I have to say then I get to meet the underboss.”

The underboss being Cora Hale. This kid is being fast-tracked and it puts Allison on edge. If Peter is this eager to take down Satomi, then how much time does she have? She expected Liam to spend at least three months building up trust with Derek. Never before has an undercover agent met with the other lieutenants. The BHPD has never even dreamed of getting this close.

She’s as nervous as she is excited, stomach twisting and flopping all over the place.

“I like,” Allison says, not talking about the shirt. “Quick, the lieutenants, did he give you any names?”

Liam shakes his head, “Nah. He still doesn’t, like, trust me? He fights on the phone with someone about it all the time, like, right in front of me. He doesn’t think I’m _Hale material_.”

Considering the kid is talking to a cop, Derek’s instinct is probably right. People in the inner circle would rather eat cyanide than rat, according to Allison’s old files. Peter Hale’s revenge is slow and merciless. She’s seen pictures of the mangled corpses. Death is a far kinder fate.

Allison tucks her hair behind her ear, nervously fiddling with the strands as they fall to her neck. Everything about this is wrong. She has half a mind to pull Liam out of this, but what if she can’t find another way in?

“Do you know who he’s on the phone with?” Allison asks instead of voicing her fears. Liam doesn’t need her doubts in his head right now.

“Nah,” he says. “That means it’s probably Peter, right? No one’s even said his name around me.”

That’s not exactly _weird_ , what with how secretive Peter Hale is. If Peter has taken enough of an interest in Liam to talk to Derek about him personally, it might be a bad sign. Whatever is going on here, Peter is way too invested in it.

This has to be Allison’s fault. She dangled a way into Satomi’s organization right in front of him and now he’s chomping at the bit.

“Has Satomi said anything to you?” Allison asks him.

Liam shoves his hands into his pocket, shakes his head, “Nah, nothing’s really changed on her side. She doesn’t even know the Hales want to expand. Why? Have you heard anything? For real, Argent, you’re still taking care of my family, right?”

“Of course,” Allison tells him, allowing warmth to seep into her voice. She reaches into her pocket and shows him a picture on her phone, Mason with a breathing tube down his throat.

Mason’s been like a brother to Liam for as long as he can remember, Liam told her once. Three months ago, he got shot in the crossfire between Satomi’s men and Hale’s at the docks; the story changes every time she asks him, but the result is always the same: he lands in a coma with only Liam to pay his bills. There’s a bullet lodged near his spine and the swelling is too much for his body to handle. She pulled the tragic story from him an inch at a time, like dragging nails through his throat.

She only got him to agree to work with the Hales by moving Mason to a specialist hospital three towns away. She uses her inheritance from Kate’s life insurance and 401k to pay the bills, but it’s a small price compared to what Liam is giving her.

“ _I want to help_ ,” Liam said to her when she offered. “ _I want both of them to pay for what they did to him._ ”

Allison sits with him for two hours once a week; she reads him books and tells him about Liam, even though she doesn’t know much. It’s the least she can do for a boy risking everything.

“Maybe, after they trust me more, I can go with you to see him?” Liam asks, tears in his eyes as she moves to take her phone back.

“Maybe,” Allison says, like a parent to a toddler. Her voice betrays nothing. Liam needs the hope to make it through this ordeal, a light at the end of his hell.

Honestly, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to sneak away. It’s over an hour drive to the hospital. Just them meeting like this anymore is bordering on too much of a risk, now with Peter’s increased interest.

Liam nods, a quick jerk that probably rattles his brain around inside of his skull. His smile is tight like he knows she’s lying but is too afraid of having his hope crushed to call her out on it.

“They’re waiting for his body to fight the infection before they operate. I’ll try to keep you as updated as I can.”

They talk some more about the organization, about what he’s noticed. Liam isn’t a trained detective, but he’s not stupid either. He tells her the locations of warehouses Derek’s taken him to do business, of the tailor on 22nd street who gave Liam his clothes for free at a nod, of the small mom and pop bakery on Hodgkins Ave where Derek got a scone and $800 slid across the counter.

Allison devours every detail, drinks the victory like it’s wine. She works to ignore the fiery red hair out of the corner of her eye.

When Liam eventually leaves, Allison turns around to see the girl chatting with a John. She grips his tie tight in her tiny hand and drags him down the mouth of a dark alley with a wicked smirk.

Allison leaves her to her business. She’s got her own to do.

* * *

It’s late when Allison sees the girl again.

It’s been three weeks since she last saw her disappear into the shadows of the city, hiding illicit activities in the dark like everyone else. Allison finds herself relieved as she watches her now, clutching a jacket tight around her, ready to discard it at the sight of a possible customer.

Allison isn’t supposed to be on this street tonight.

Her shift ended hours ago. She was supposed to go home, get started on the weekend Gerard told her she needed after today of all days; the serial killer Yukimura and she brought in last month getting a mistrial was just the icing on the cake of an already terrible anniversary.

She has lots of free time in the long lulls between activity the Hale case brings her and Gerard loves to bounce her around the precinct. Yukimura and her worked the Daehler case perfectly, meticulously combing for evidence, questioning every witness they could find. They wrapped it all up for the DA in a nice little bow, and the whole thing ended up getting thrown out all because of a stupid hung jury.

Now, one of the key witnesses is getting cold feet about testifying again. It’s likely that Daehler, with his bright smile and schoolboy charm, could walk free to murder helpless women all he likes.

After leaving, Allison found herself driving, mindless, detached from her body. Instead of the road, all she could see was Matt’s laughing face as she questioned him, almost proud of the body count he stacked up. Looking directly into the heart of evil never gets easier.

Allison eventually pours back into herself, surprised to find herself parked outside one of the girl’s usual haunts.

Great. Now she’s stalking her.

Allison fiddles with the engine, ready to turn around and go home, forget the girl with the red hair and the tired face and all that she represents in this sadistic city, when the rain starts.

She curses, watches as the girl slumps against the wall, shoulders falling. She looks too young, suddenly, like the world has been too unkind and one more act of malice could be the end of her.

The thick, heavy drops pelting against the window make Allison stop, frowning. She looks through them, watches the girl stubbornly lean against the brick building instead of seeking shelter.

Allison supposes a beating is worse than a cold.

Instead of turning around, like she should, she puts the car in drive and doesn’t stop until she’s in front of the shivering girl. Allison watches a mask slip on before her eyes, a chameleon changing their skin.

“Not the best night for work,” Allison says, rolling down the window. Rain pelts the interior of her car, but Allison finds it hard to care as a pair of striking, sharp eyes hold her from across the sidewalk. Eyeliner is smudged and running, filling the cracks in the bags under her eyes. She looks tired, Allison notes with an ache in her chest.

It’s the eyes themselves that cut her deepest, though. They’re almost overwhelmingly large, creating an innocent stare that seems at war with the too perceptive glint. The green of them is a lush forest pathway to Allison’s childhood, the color calling memories of her mother’s own haunted, intelligent, blue-green eyes that always watched over her.

It’s almost too much to bear on today of all days.

“You’d be surprised,” the girl says jarring her back to the present with her chin tilted up like a challenge, “All the freaky ones come out when it’s like this.”

She gives Allison a once-over, sharp eyes penetrating her soul, as if trying to determine if she’s a freak too. Allison doesn’t want to know what she finds.

“Look, I know a good shelter on the other side of town,” Allison says, fingers hovering over the unlock button. “Let me take you there. The owner owes me a favor. She could put you up for a few days”

She scoffs, “And have my pimp think I’m running? Yeah, nice try, lady.”

Allison mentally curses. She had been hoping against hope that the girl was a free agent; they’re getting harder and harder to find in this town as both Hale and Satomi increase their trafficking rings. It’s almost always too late to help the ones who have been beaten into being property.

“I just want to help,” Allison tries, “I doubt your _manager_ would want you to get sick.”

“People don’t get sick from the rain,” the girl sneers. Her face falls for a second, reality settling into the cold of her bones, “I can’t leave until I make my money for the night, and I can’t go farther than the Quality Inn.”

“How much do you need?” The question comes unbidden from Allison’s lips. Before she can even think it through, she’s reaching for her wallet.

“This isn’t my first rainy night, lady. Spring’s almost over. I can handle it until then.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” Allison insists, too much emotion making her tongue thick in her mouth.

Everything about today is collapsing in on her. She just wants a win. She just needs to know she’s doing something right in this godforsaken world.

“What,” the girl says unkindly, mouth a mean smile, “Are you going to come save me everytime it gets a little wet?”

The way she says the last word, twists it between her full, pink lips, makes Allison’s stomach flip.

She doesn’t have an answer for that, can’t with her heart tying itself in knots. All she can manage to vomit out is, “Come with me. Stay at my place. I’m only a few blocks away and I’ll-  your pimp won’t mind.”

She words it carefully, casually displaying her wallet to the girl’s hungry eyes. Years of being on the other side of this situation tells her what words to avoid.

Everything about the girl changes at the words, unfurling from her protective hunch. Suddenly, ever asset is jutted out, a red velvet rope is held open for Allison to cross through. Her smile curls, eyelashes flutter, “Honey, if you wanted some company on a cold night, all you had to do was say so.”

It might be wrong of her, but Allison waits until the girl is in the car, seat belt securely buckled, before she says, voice wobbling, “This isn’t- it’s not a sex thing.”

This is easily the most brainless thing she’s ever done. If anyone at the squad finds out she brought a prostitute back to her home, it’s the end of her career. Her entire family would be ashamed. She could be disowned from her lineage full of honorable cops, a smudge on their perfect reputation. It’s already hard enough to have a conversation with her dad; if she loses her badge because people think she’s soliciting a prostitute, her entire life is over.

But, watching as the girl fiddles with her seat heater and flicks the water drops from her arms, Allison finds it hard to be worried about what tomorrow could bring.

“It can be whatever you want, honey. There are plenty of old men who pay me just to go to dinner with them.”

That’s comforting to hear- that’s why it’s a lie. The truth of the world is never so easy. Allison knows enough to know that, while escorting and prostitution are very different fields, even they can’t escape the greedy hands of men.

Allison doesn’t call her out on it.

She puts the car in drive and leaves the street behind, tries to leave the darkness in her chest with it but knows it will follow her home as it always does.

“I’m Allison,” Allison says after a minute of the girl fiddling with the knobs of her radio. She can’t seem to find what she’s looking for but Allison doesn’t think she’d accept her help.

“You can call me Lydia,” she says, voice rich as if she’s gifting her a boon. She finally settles on a channel, letting jazz music fill the silence of the car. She sits back primly, relaxes into the leather of the seat like she’s found a home there.

“Not what I expected you to pick,” Allison admits, wincing as the words awkwardly leave her lips.

“What?” Lydia asks, “The name or the music?”

“Both,” Allison settles on. “Most girls use common names when they work. I’ve met a lot of Janes and Crystals.”

“Aw, am I not your first?” Lydia smirks at her. From the corner of her eye, Allison sees Lydia turn her entire body toward her in her seat. “That breaks my heart, hun. I thought we had something special.”

They do; Allison’s never brought any of the girls she’s met home. Allison’s never let herself lose control like this.

“What is it?” Lydia asks suddenly.

Allison’s heart jumps, “What do you mean?”

“Your thing. You have to have a weird thing,” Lydia explains, talking with her hands. The movement makes the space in the car feel even smaller, more intimate somehow. Allison can’t help but idle too long at a stop sign, entranced. “You’re too pretty to have to resort to paying for sex for _pleasure_ , so there has to be something you feel too self-conscious about to get from your partner. Power, humiliation, pain- what is it?”

Allison doesn’t know how to respond to that. Her hands clench the steering wheel tighter; she turns away, looks determinedly ahead to avoid the inquisitive stare boring holes into her soul.

“Oh,” Lydia says, a puzzle sliding into place. Her voice turns impossibly soft, “I get it. You’re not out, are you? Your family would probably shun you if you brought home a girl, right?”

The words crack like a stone thrown on a thin pond of ice. They splinter through her, fractals digging into her lungs, turning her breathing sharp.

“No-,” she tries, the lie strangling her.

Instead of the road, all she can see is Gerard’s mouth telling her _Argent’s are_ **_normal_ **. Kate’s knowing look whenever Allison talked to Kira in front of her. Chris’s eyes clenched tight, refusing the words from her lips as they stretched the space between them. She feels like she’s suffocating, suddenly, under the weight of all of their expectations and shame. The mountain she’s been carefully holding up is turning into an avalanche, crushing her.

A warm hand slides to her shoulder. It settles there, anchoring her to the present instead of the pain of the past. She blinks away the tears layered over her eyes, pushing everything down and locking it back up.

It’s scary how easily this girl can shake hands with the skeletons in her closet.

“It’s okay,” Lydia says, smile small and gentle. She winks, “I can give you the girlfriend experience.”

It shocks a laugh out of Allison, reminds her of this absurd situation she’s gotten herself into.

“It’s not like that,” she tries again, “I just wanted to do something nice. Is that so hard to believe?”

Lydia’s smile twists into something foreign on her face and she leans back in her seat, facing away from Allison.

“Everyone wants something,” she says, voice purposely blank.

The words dump ice water down Allison’s back, reminding her of the reality of the situation, their starkly different lives. Tomorrow, Lydia will have to go back to a corner, and Allison to the precinct. Everything about tonight and them and the canyon between them seems surreal.

The rest of the drive happens in silence, thick like a fog, driving them further apart.

Eventually, Allison parks outside of her apartment. She leans over, reaching across the back seat to find the thick hoodie she leaves there for emergencies. She tries to be quick about it, knowing the movement leaves her in an uncomfortable position with her chest pressed close to Lydia’s shoulder. She doesn’t want her to get any ideas about her motivations.

She finally catches the material with her fingers and flings herself back into her seat to find Lydia watching her with a smirk.

“Come on,” Allison says, voice a little too breathless for her liking, “It’s still raining and I don’t want my neighbors getting the wrong idea.”

“And what idea is that?” Lydia asks, the teasing lilt back. Nevertheless, she disappears into the black hoodie. The jacket is already huge on Allison, but it absolutely dwarfs Lydia’s small, slender frame.

Instead of feeding Lydia’s fire, Allison gets out of the car. Lydia follows, surprisingly silent.

It’s after three am. The street is quiet and the lobby is empty, silencing Allison’s stuttering heart. This is beyond risky; Allison can see the headlines now: FAMOUS DETECTIVE’S DAUGHTER CAUGHT SOLICITING PROSTITUTE- COMMUNITY IN OUTRAGE.

Of course, it would never be about her. Just her name. Argent is a curse passed down generation to generation, and each cop who wears it gets a bigger and bigger target on their back.

Unfortunately, Kate’s not the first to have taken a shot to the bullseye.

Allison grits her teeth at the thought, gestures for Lydia to follow her up the two sets of stairs to her apartment on the second floor.

She nervously stumbles with the key in the lock, Lydia’s presence behind her making her hands shake. Once she allows her into this apartment, that’s it. It won’t matter what Allison says if anyone finds out. Her career is in the toilet.

Allison opens the door anyway.

The apartment isn’t anything fancy; it can be described as spacious if only because it lacks so many things that make it a home. The furniture is sparse and mismatched, looking more like a college dorm room than the home of a woman in her mid-twenties.  

It’s almost embarrassing, but Allison doesn’t really consider the apartment hers. The station is her true home. Even when she was young, the walls of the bullpen were more familiar than her house. This is just a place she stores her clothes and sleeps in between shifts.

Lydia doesn’t seem to mind it, anyway. She steps through the archway and walks around the living room slowly, taking in every detail with a sweep of her eyes. Allison watches as she pauses in front of the only photo in the house, of Allison, sixteen, with her smiling parents on either side of her.

Allison doesn’t look at the image, can’t on today of all days, sees past it to the curve of Lydia’s jaw, the delicate shadow of her collarbone. Allison would always rather focus on something beautiful than something tragic. She knows that if she looks at the picture, sees Victoria’s face, she will crumble like a falling city at the end of all things.

Victoria, always one to despise weakness, would hate it if Allison started sobbing on the anniversary of her murder. She would hate it more that Allison’s risking her career like this, though, so Allison pushes both thoughts from her mind.

“They look nice,” Lydia says, putting the picture back down on the end table. “You know, for homophobes.”

“We all have our moments, right?” Allison says, tone brokering no more room for comments on the matter. She doesn’t think that will stop Lydia so she quickly adds, “I’m going to order Chinese. Do you want anything?”

“Thank god,” Lydia says, turning back to face her. Inside, with proper lighting, Allison can see the light flush of pink in Lydia’s cheeks, “I thought you were never going to offer food.”

After a reaction like that, Allison doesn’t waste much time before ordering.

While they wait, Allison offers Lydia a shower and she gladly accepts without even a crack about Allison joining her, eager to rid herself of the city smog that clings to the streets and takes home in the lungs of its citizens. Allison lays out a pair of sweats and a sleeping shirt for her and considers throwing the old clothes in the washer but finds them surprisingly clean, smelling fresh of fabric softener. Allison curses her own internal prejudice and throws them in the dryer instead.

After she finishes with that, she changes into sleeping pants of her own, opens a bottle of wine, and pours two glasses before she thinks better of it. It’s hard to remind herself that Lydia isn’t just a friend she invited over, as if Allison has any friends she  _would_ invite over. She doesn’t want the girl to think she’s trying to take advantage of her. It’s probably sex worker 101 to not drink from an open container.

She considers dropping the idea, pouring the whole bottle down the sink, but It’s been a long day and Allison needs something to soften the edge. She pours the wine back into the bottle, leaves the glass on the counter, and takes her goblet over to the couch with her.

As Allison reaches for the remote, Lydia emerges from the bathroom in a cloud of steam. Her skin is glowing, radiant in the billowing fog. Allison didn’t think it was possible for the girl to look any more gorgeous, but the sight of her now ties her tongue in a knot.

“I used some of your fancy moisturizer. Hope you don’t mind,” Lydia winks.

Allison doesn’t, hasn’t used it since Chris bought it for her for Christmas. She almost tells her just to take it with her when she leaves when Lydia speaks again.

“Aw, hun,” she says, sweeping into the living room. Her eyes are fixed to the counter, “You don’t have to seduce me.”

Allison feels heat blaze in her chest. She swallows the wine in her mouth, thankful she doesn’t choke at Lydia’s words, “I’m not, I just figured you weren’t the only one who’s had a long day. You don’t have to drink it if you’re not-”

“Shut up,” Lydia says, rolling her eyes. Allison’s eyes track her as she walks into the kitchen and fills the glass with the sparkling white wine. She takes a long drink from it, neck tilted back as if on display. When she’s finished, she walks toward Allison, causing her to turn away like she was caught doing something wrong. “You’re right- it’s been a really fucking long day. Sorta been a long life, actually.”

Allison doesn’t know what to say to that. Every idea that pops into her head is insufficient and dumb, like something from a cheesy Hallmark movie. She can’t heal Lydia’s life with soft words. She thinks it would be an insult to try.

The silence stretches on for too long. Lydia rolls her eyes at her and mumbles under her breath as she drops down onto the other side of the sofa, curling her feet under her like a bird.

In apology for her inadequacy, Allison hands Lydia the TV remote.

Thankfully, at that moment the doorbell rings. Allison scrambles from her seat to answer it, angling the door so the delivery boy can’t see Lydia, trades the money in her hands for the box of food, and closes the door.

She places the box on the coffee table in front of a starving looking Lydia and then heads into the kitchen to get paper plates and plastic forks. She doesn’t have any glass or silverware and Lydia doesn’t comment on it.

Together, they divide the food. Lydia steals all of the eggrolls and her pout is so sweet that Allison can’t begrudge her for it.

She begins eating immediately, famished from ducking lunch and dinner earlier. Yukimura offered to take her out for a beer and some bar food, but Allison turned her down. At the time, she planned on drinking an entire bottle of wine and passing out.

Things are… a bit more complicated, but the plan is still possible.

Lydia, on the other hand, doesn’t begin eating until she’s found something suitable to watch first. Allison rolls her eyes as she settles on some rerun of Jeopardy.

“I didn’t even know this was still on TV,” Allison says.

“That’s because they only tell smart people about it,” Lydia explains, voice so serious Allison almost believes her.

Allison relaxes against the couch cushion, watching as Lydia bounces in her seat as she answers every question before the contestants can buzz in.

“Who is Euclid of Alexandria?”

“What is x - 3?”

“When was the 1960’s?”

And on and on and on. It feels overwhelmingly domestic. Anyone looking in from the window would only see two people, happy. Allison has to shake her head, stuffing more food in her mouth as she reminds herself vehemently that this is _not_ Pretty Women. She’s doing a good deed. That’s all.

Thunder rumbles outside, as if on cue.

Lydia’s excitement is infectious. Allison finds herself more absorbed in Lydia than the game on screen, watching the color flood her cheeks and the bright shine of her eyes whenever she gets an answer right, which is every time.

The announcer asks, “Which writer said, “Where large sums of money are involved, it is advisable to trust nobody?”

Lydia hesitates for half a second and Allison immediately jumps in, “Agatha Christie!”

She looks at Lydia expectantly, only to find the girl laughing quietly to herself. She shakes her head, the small giggle bubbling as if she can’t hold it back.

“What?” Allison demands, unable to stop herself from smiling even though she’s sure she’s supposed to feel embarrassed. “I got it right!”

“You have to answer as a question or else it doesn’t count,” Lydia explains, every few words broken up by laughter. “I’m sorry, you just looked so proud of yourself. Of course you would like mystery books.”

“Well at least _I_ knew the answer,” Allison huffs playfully, not sure what to make of the latter comment. Allison's badge is stowed away in her purse and there's nothing in the apartment to tip Lydia off to her career. She's a smart girl, Allison reminds herself. Maybe, all those times Allison was watching her, Lydia was watching back. 

The comment shuts Lydia up, but the smile is still on her face so Allison knows she isn’t offended.

“I was taking a _breath_ ,” she excuses with a delicate sniff. “If you hadn’t noticed, I was kind of on a roll.”

“Trust me,” Allison says, “I noticed. You’re seriously smart.”

The  _how are you not doing more with your life than this_ goes unsaid, but it eats at the warm atmosphere in the room until the delicate bridge they were building between them crumbles and falls into the dark abyss.

“Things just happen,” Lydia says after a long silence. She mutes the tv, rolls the remote between her fingers like it can turn back time. Eventually, when she doesn’t go anywhere, she continues, “My dad didn’t like that I was smart, or, actually, smarter than him. He was sort of old-fashioned that way, you know? He would get so angry, and eventually, I just learned to hide it. I got too good at hiding it, I guess because my teachers never believed my work was mine when I got A’s. My mom was the only one who ever believed in me and when she died, I was so depressed I just stopped caring, dropped out of high school. My dad disowned me because he didn’t want to support me. And I guess I’ve just been doing what I needed to do to survive ever since.”

It’s different than the other stories Allison’s been told over the years, and that makes it all the more heartwrenching somehow. A girl who should have had everything, respect, opportunity, an education, denied everything, even her father’s love. Inside Lydia’s mind could be a cure for a number of illnesses or the answer to too many of the world’s problems.

She’s only known her for a few short hours, but Allison knows, in her heart, that every girl out there, but Lydia especially, is too bright to rot away on the broken streets of Beacon City.  Something cracks and cries in her chest, and she feels her eyes flood with tears. Allison’s unable to stop herself from reaching forward, gripping Lydia’s hand tight with her own.

“That’s not fair,” Allison says, voice strong as steel even when it shakes. “You deserve so much more.”

Lydia squeezes back, and her smile is sad when she shrugs, “It could’ve always been worse, right?”

She’s trying to make her voice light, trying to lift the darkness from Allison’s eyes by putting on a brave face.

The tension in the room is so thick it chokes Allison, but she refuses to be quiet this time.

“Thank god it wasn’t,” Allison says, refusing to let her so casually forgive the cruelties the world has given her.

Lydia jerks back at the words, slapped by them. It breaks Allison’s heart even more that no one has ever told Lydia that she didn’t deserve this. How has no one looked at this girl’s suffering and told her that it was okay to cry, to mourn who she could’ve been if the world had been kinder?

Lydia clutches at the hand holding hers as if she’s afraid to let it go. Suddenly, she leans forward, and her lips are warm and soft and _right_.

It burns through her in a way no other kiss has, lighting fires all up and down her spine. Her heart pounds, heavy with desire. Allison lets herself clutch at Lydia’s hair, allows herself to picture where this night could go, how Lydia would feel beneath her hands, the intoxicating rush of letting herself have someone.

She allows herself this one beautiful second, lets the fantasy of it make a home in her brain, commits the curves of Lydia’s lips to her memory before she pulls back.

“We can’t,” Allison says, and she sounds wrecked. She’s never heard her voice sound like this, so desperate and raw and wanting.

Her chest heaves as if her heart is tugging her forward, pulling her closer to Lydia’s own, but she refuses to let herself move.

Lydia looks at her like she’s just now seeing her for the first time. She rests a hand against Allison’s cheek, rubs her thumb along the bone. Allison shivers at the contact, face leaning into the warmth offered there even as her spine contorts back, bringing her away from the temptation of touch.

“I want to,” Lydia says. She moves her face closer, whispers into the space between them, “It’s okay. I want you.”

It sets Allison’s bloodstream on fire and she knows, instantly, those words are going to ring in her ears for the rest of her life.

Lydia’s so close her breath puffs gently against Allison’s face. It would be so easy to give in, tilt her head up, let herself have what Lydia wants to give.

Lydia’s hand is warm and soft underneath her own. Allison cups it, holds it close against her cheek for a second, committing the texture of her fingers to memory. She pulls it away, only far enough for a delicate graze of her lips against the silk of her palm.

Allison is weak. She wants to stay in this bubble forever, damn the consequences, but she knows she’ll regret it if she does. She doesn’t want her memory of Lydia, of this surreal ending to a godawful day, to be clouded by the sting of her own shame.

She gives Lydia back her hands. She pulls away, stands from the couch.

“There’s a guest room down the hall,” she says, voice still thick with want. Allison clears her throat, “I have $700 in cash I can leave on the counter. Is that going to be enough?”

Allison doesn’t look at Lydia. Her eyes are reserved for the wallpaper across the room. She knows, deep in her soul, that one look at the girl will be the end of her.

“Yeah,” Lydia says after a long, agonizing second. She sounds like she’s been punched.

She opens her mouth to say something else but Allison doesn’t stay around to hear it. She flees to her room, closes and locks the door behind her, and licks at her lips, still feeling the ghost of Lydia there.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Do I do enough research? Who knows? Not me.

When Allison feels brave enough to sneak out of her bedroom the next morning the money is gone, the leftover Chinese food is in the fridge, and her hoodie is missing.

She sees Lydia everywhere she looks, on her couch, in the doorway of the bathroom, in the crumbled up pajamas left in the guestroom. Allison lifts the gray shirt to her face, embarrasingly tries to inhale any trace of Lydia only to find her own shampoo.

The weekend passes in a blur; by the time Monday rolls around, Allison is ready to write the whole thing off as a vivid dream, one of many ready to be repressed. It’s easy to pretend, anyway, as long as she doesn’t look in her wallet or the bags under her eyes, proof to the world that she’s barely slept at all.

She throws herself back into her work with a reckless conviction, looking for anything to distract her from the thought of Lydia’s lips.

Kira asks her to help her work a murder case, but, when they discover the victim’s eight-year-old daughter is missing, it gets picked up by the special victims unit. They work a B&E and get a beer instead, laughing until closing in the low lighting of the bar.

She works with Parrish and they track down a renowned car thief of the downtown district. After a high-speed car chase, he manages to slip through their fingers. According to security tapes, they barely missed his plane taking off. Parrish kicks himself for days after; Allison doesn’t have the words to comfort him.

McCall and her work a homicide in the suburbs. It seems normal until Allison finds a weird carving in the floor under the rug right where the victim’s body lay. In a research binge, Scott discovers the M.O. matches another case a few months back and another three before that. He tells her it in whispers and they keep it quiet enough to piece it all together, allowing them to catch the serial killer before Major Crimes even gets wind of it. The newspaper calls him The Symbol Slayer. Stiles gets the article framed above Scott’s desk.  

Stilinski and her share notes about their respective families over lunch, Allison’s heart heavy with the weight of Liam’s folder in a secret compartment of her desk drawer.

“A random street kid is getting you all this intel?” Stiles asks, the greed evident in his dark eyes.

His own investigation isn’t going nearly as well. Stiles was handed the Satomi files when an old detective who he shadowed as a rookie retired. He made a good enough impression to get to lead the whole case. He’s been picking at it like a dog with a bone ever since, but the Satomis are just as good as the Hales when it comes to secrets.

Allison shrugs easily, takes a long sip of her coffee to numb her guilty heart, “Everyone trusts a rentboy. He’s grown up on these streets. People know him.”

Stiles snorts, “More like Peter Hale’s just weak for a pretty face.”

Allison, who has a similar failing, doesn’t comment on the matter.

“It’s just easier to work in a kid who has roots in the city than someone new, you know?” Allison says, leaning forward. “The people here trust their own.”

Stiles has his own undercover op going on too, but his is inherited from the old caseworker. The guy’s an _actual_ undercover cop, fresh out of the academy when he was poached to work the case. He’s still alive after five years, so that’s good news, but he seems to have hit the ceiling as a soldier.

At the very least, Stiles gets tips about all of the dirty work going on in the underbelly of the city, when the bribes take place, deliveries are made, and shipments dock, but by the time the soldiers learn about it, the plan is already in motion. It’s hard to stop a moving train.

“I’m thinking about pulling him,” Stiles admits, biting his lip. He looks around slowly before leaning in, whispering, “Five years? The kid was nineteen when he went in. Don’t tell your grandfather this, but his info’s been kinda off lately. I think he’s turned.”

Allison’s blood runs cold at that. It’s the fear that keeps every handler up at night. The psychological ramifications of going undercover for too long, playing pretend at a whole separate identity, it can warp the mind.

The only reason Allison feels safe with Liam is that she has Mason as a bargaining chip, but even that isn’t a sure thing. Liam can turn on her without a moment's notice. No one but them knows about their meetings every month. It would be so easy for him to just end her, show the Hales his loyalty with her blood.

“Shit,” Allison breathes in a hiss. “What are you going to do?”

“What I have to,” Stiles says. He holds up his car keys. “You in?”

The bring a team with them to raid the distribution center that smuggles Satomi’s cocaine, street name SMT, into the city. While cocaine isn’t really the most popular drug on the streets anymore, thanks to shows like Breaking Bad romanticizing crystal meth, it’s still Satomi’s highest selling item. Hale stopped moving it in such large quantities years ago.

The Hale organization has always been more diverse than Satomi when it comes to product.

Stiles’s guy is only one of fifty of Satomi’s soldiers working there, sifting through giant tubs of grains and seasoning to find the wrapped packages.

Many of them run and escape, but they bring enough back to the station to warrant an ovation. It’s a small victory if it can be called that at all. Most of the perps they bring in don’t know anything Stiles doesn’t already know, but it’ll put a dent in Satomi’s plans. It’ll delay her shipments until she finds a new smuggler.

The raid is more of an annoying fly in the grand scheme, but taking down Satomi wasn’t the goal today.

She’s by Stiles’s side the entire time, questioning the other grunts, bagging evidence, filling out piles upon piles of paperwork. Together, they decommission agent Demarco. He’s crying the whole time they tell him he can go home.

“This is my life,” he says, shaking. “I’m _24_. I don’t- I don’t know who I am without this. I’ve seen so much. I don’t know how to go back.”

They trade a troubled look, each silently asking each other for hope in a world as cruel as this. Neither can give the other what they’re looking for.

They draw up safety house arrangements and new identities for him and his immediate family to live a happy and free life on the other side of the coast. She makes some calls to a buddy over there for recommendations of a good department therapist. Stiles suggests he take up painting, like a joke, but Demarco smiles a little at the idea.

Allison’s the one who breaks the news to Gerard. He closes his office door, draws the blinds so he can yell at her in peace.

She’s a disgrace. It was her idea, wasn’t it? She’s the one who told Stilinski to pull the cover, all because she wanted the glory. Isn’t that right? She disgusts him.

“I have half a mind to transfer you to a different precinct,” he spits. “Some two-bit town where nothing ever happens. Let you rot there for all I care.”

He doesn’t let her get a word in edgewise, not that she’d know what to say anyway. She didn’t do anything wrong. It wasn’t even her call to make, but she’s not going to let him know that, not when he’s spitting enough fire and fury to bring the world to its knees.

Stiles doesn’t need to see this side of her grandfather, not when he’s taken such a big loss today.

Gerard stops pacing, looks at her, and, for a second, Allison wonders if he remembers giving her candy whenever she came to the station to visit after school, all the times he’d let her sit in the front seat of his car and fiddle with the sirens while ice cream dripped on his seats.

Instead, he says, “You’re lucky my daughter had a soft spot for you.”

It cuts deeper than any other reprimand has.

Before Kate died, Gerard treated her like everyone else. For a long time, she believed her was some doddering old fool, an old man who rose to the rank of captain by virtue of simply being a cop for so long. Of course, she had heard the stories, how he single-handedly solved the Scarlet Killer case all on his own, the decorated career of accomplishments, the hushed investigations into police brutality.

Growing up, those were always just far-away stories. He was always just Grandpa Gerard to her.

Until she became a cop. Until Kate was murdered. Until he couldn’t look at her without seeing his daughter. Until he started looking away because he knew Allison could never match up.

It’s nothing she doesn’t know, but it bruises her battered heart just the same.

Satisfied at his final blow causing her to flinch, Gerard lets her leave with no official punishment. She didn’t do actually do anything wrong, and she thinks that’s what upsets him the most.

With her hand closed around the doorknob, it’s easier for Allison to turn, look Gerard in the eye, and say, “It was the right call. If you would just look at this objectively, you would know it.”

She leaves before his face can turn red, sputtering out the beginning of sentences like he’s choking on them.

She avoids the curious, watchful eyes of the bullpen as she leaves the office, grabs her jacket, and sprints to her car, desperate to escape everything that drowns her.

To numb the ache in her rattling, creaking chest, Allison works cases and meets with informants. After a safe amount of time, she finally heads to that bakery Liam told her about, but, as she suspected, the old couple won’t tell her anything. She buys a small fruit tart and leaves her card, even though she knows they won’t call.

Allison roams the back alleys Liam outlined for her with her hands stuffed in the pockets of her leather jacket, hands balled into fists as she tries to look non-threatening. She must smell too much like the station, her name must be too big because anytime people see her, they move their business into the shadows. The good ones, the ones she knows from working with at donation centers and from letting off with a warning, nod at her in greeting. She asks one or two of them if they know anything about Derek Hale, and they smile at her as they tell her things she already knows. It’s a dead end.

She visits Mason more than usual, if only to stop herself from feeling so worthless. 

She fills the days with busy work to hide from Gerard’s heated glare, pretends she’s not looking for red hair in building alcoves.

Allison’s really _not_ looking for her, except when she is. The thing is though, she can never find her. Lydia’s usual spots are covered by older, more familiar girls. Concern constricts her throat until she wakes up in a puddle of sweat, her mother’s violent words ringing in her ears. Allison almost gives in and asks one of them if they know where to find Lydia, but forces herself to walk away.

She remembers Lydia’s smirk when Allison rolled down her window that night. Lydia knows how to take care of herself; she’s been playing this game longer than Allison’s been a cop. She still remembers her weak grasp on her control in the wake of Lydia’s lips. Allison knows when she’s pushing her luck.

The weeks bleed into each other until Allison’s almost able to convince herself it was all some dream, brought on by the turbulent emotions swirling in her heart over her mother’s death. She even calls Chris to try to assuage her guilt, but all his voice does is make the pit in her stomach deeper. She dodges his awkward invitation to dinner and hangs up after three minutes.

Allison’s packing up her stuff at the end of her shift when Braeden calls her, which is more than enough to set off alarms in her ears. Braeden never calls. It’s always Allison, sending her emails about lunch reminders and blowing up her phone when the woman leaves her waiting at their restaurant for fifteen minutes.

Her shock almost causes her to miss the call; Allison scrambles to answer it as she casually tries to leave her desk without arousing suspicion.

“What’s up?” Allison answers, working to keep her voice light as she slips through the precinct doors.

“Sorry to bother you,” Braeden says, in a tone that is very clearly not sorry at all, “My partner’s out today and I know how you just love to get your hand on anything involving Hale.”

Allison almost drops her car keys at the name.

“What have you got?” She asks, working to keep her voice calm when all she wants to do is demand to know what Braeden has for her.

Braeden works the Hale Sex Trafficking ring from the SVU department. Allison and her usually meet a few times a month to compare notes on the organization. It took Allison a long time to warm up to Braeden, seeing her as competition in a game of who can bring down the Hales first. It took her entirely too long to realize Braeden’s not here for the glory or the revenge or to avenge her family. Braeden just wants to help as many girls as she can.

Once Allison realized that, things between them got better.

“There’s a hotel manager who won’t stop calling the station,” Braeden says. Allison can tell from the bite to her words that she’s annoyed but trying to hide it. “ _Apparently_  there are some of Hale’s girls working in his lobby. I told him we couldn’t really ask them to leave unless he had proof, but he said that wasn’t why he was calling.”

Allison rolls her eyes; hotels rarely have issues with sex work happening under their noses so long as the rings pay them enough to turn a blind eye. It’s disgusting how many cogs and gears work in tandem like a well-oiled machine to keep women trapped in a horrifying hell.

Allison slides into the front seat of her car, locks the door behind her, “So what’s the issue then? Is he not getting his fair cut? You did tell him we weren’t loan sharks, right?”

“I didn’t say it nearly as kindly,” Braeden says with a smile in her voice. “But he says he has proof they’re Hale girls, and that their keeper is in the lobby right now getting plowed. He’s _bragging_ about it, Argent. They have him on a security tape _admitting_ to it.”

Allison’s heart stops. Braeden’s words are too good to be true. The Hale organization is wrapped up too tight to employ someone with such loose lips. Hale has to be pulling a trick, somehow, and she says as much to Braeden.

“Trick or not, I don’t care,” she says, “That’s your job to figure out. Mine is to get those girls out and arrest anyone who’s forcing them to be there.”

Allison sighs and slumps in her seat, feeling vaguely envious of Braeden’s role in this investigation. Not for the first time and surely not the last, Allison curses herself for turning down the sex crimes job. She can’t even begin to imagine how amazing it must feel to save those girls.

“Thanks for the heads up, then,” she says, trying to keep the petulance from sullying her tongue.

“Shut up,” Braeden snaps, “Do you really think I’m just calling to keep you in the loop? Since when have I ever made your job  _that_ easy? I’m asking if you want to join my raid team, Argent.”

Allison doesn’t even hesitate before accepting.

She meets Braeden at the back of the hotel, near the service entrance. They have armored trucks full of police officers hidden under the guise of laundry vans. The cover of night hides their operation well enough, but it’s always best to not take chances when these people are trained to notice anything out of the ordinary. The air is thick with tension, causing Allison to question whether she should be here at all.

Braeden smiles when she sees her, making Allison’s shoulders relax. She waves her over to a black car parked underneath the tree. When she gets there, Braeden hands her a bulletproof vest and doesn’t even wait for her to slip it on under her shirt before she turns back to the map.

Braeden and another officer who introduces herself as Violet catch Allison up on the situation. Braeden’s plan is simple: divide and conquer.

The manager has the description of a few men he saw talking to the girls, but he didn’t pay enough attention to recall their room number. Violet will be leading a team down the floors of the hotel, going door to door with thirty uniformed officers at her back. Braeden will lead a smaller, more covert unit through the lobby and lounge area, where the manager will discretely point out the leader.

Braeden squints at her, “You can split the team with Violet and take floors three and four, or you can come with me. I’ll even let you cuff the scumbag if you want.”

The offer is entirely too generous; it almost has Allison salivating at the mere idea of reading such an asshole his rights.

She almost jumps to accept before Braeden can change her mind, but something stops her. Braeden’s eyes are narrowed the tiniest amount, her hands stiff where the rest on the map, and Allison has to ask, “Did Blake tell you to let me make the collar?”

“Huh,” Braeden says lightly, “Guess you did earn that detective promotion after all.”

Allison grimaces, heart souring in her chest. She’s not ignorant to how many people see her as just the fortunate product of nepotism, but the remark coming from Braeden’s mouth almost cuts deeper than it has when whispered by her colleagues. Maybe because she almost considers Braeden a friend.

Allison’s answering silence suffocates the air between them until Braeden caves with a tired sigh, “Yeah, she did. I don’t know what you want me to say, Allison. Commander Blake doesn’t see _you_ , she sees the glory the department had the last time there was an Argent in Sex Crimes.”

It’s not a surprise. It shouldn’t hurt.

It is. It does.

“Look, you shouldn’t take that the wrong way,” Braeden tries. Allison watches her hand twitch, an aborted attempt at offering comfort. “Victoria’s a legend. That’s not something you didn’t already know.”

She’s reduced to a child in the wake of these detectives, just a kid trying to fit into shoes entirely too big for her. It aches, an old wound cut open and filled with salt. Her pride’s already been stepped on, why not crush it all the way?

Allison catches Braeden’s dark eyes, refuses to let her look away. She asks, almost afraid of the answer, “Did you only ask me to come because your commander ordered you to?”

Braeden opens her mouth to answer, Allison’s heart clenches in preparation for the blow, but Violet coughs, “Sorry, uh, but can we handle this later? We’re losing our window.”

Allison feels the shame licking like hellfire at the edges of her soul. Still, she refuses to let Braeden’s eyes leave her own. She lets her know they’ll be continuing this conversation later and Braeden nods, resigning herself to her fate.

“I’ll take three and four,” Allison says. Part of her wants to be petty and cuff the guy herself, just to teach Braeden a lesson, but she knows it would feel wrong at the end of the day.

Besides. She didn’t come here for the glory. She came to help.

Braeden almost breathes a sigh of relief.

They go over the plan for a few more minutes before dividing the uniformed officers up. Allison explains the system to them in a whisper as they hustle up the back stairwell.

Allison will go first, knocking on doors down the hall so as not to spook any of the girls into bolting. She has a walkie in her nondominant hand and the other on her holster. If she sees anything, she signals her men and they rush the hallway so the girls can’t leave.

She hates this part, treating the victims like criminals, but if she lets them run, who knows what other trouble will find them? If she lets them leave without taking their statement, she could get suspended.

And, if the girls don’t talk…

Allison prefers to not think about it.

The third floor turns up only sleepy, annoyed guests who threaten to call her commanding officer and complain. She has to give her badge number to an old lady who looks like she wants to beat her with the nearest object, jail time be damned.

Allison reports back to her unit and they head up to the fourth floor together.

The last floor ends up being just as empty as the third. Allison stops before the last room at the end of the hall, itching to radio Violet and see if she found anything. Clearly, she chose the wrong floors.

Instead, Allison knocks on the door and waits for whatever hotel guests is behind it to wake from their slumber and threaten her with bodily harm.

The door pulls back and Allison opens her mouth, already preparing her spiel when she sees him.

The man is tall, built like a linebacker with lips pursed in a perpetual smirk. His giant form in the doorway is imposing in more ways than one.

Ennis.

Allison’s never met him, but she’s heard plenty of stories. He’s one of the only ringleaders Victoria couldn’t bring down, if only because he fled like a coward and was able to hide from the police department until they stopped actively looking. The sight of him floods her with a wave of anger; all the whispers her mother ever told her about him drown her ears like a tsunami.

Allison’s mouth is useless in the wake of him, hands numb at her sides. The paralysis seeps through her cold veins. Her whole being is entirely overloaded, processing to many different things at once to comprehend what she’s fantasized about doing for so long.

“Can I help you?” He grunts, voice rough. “I’m in the middle of something-”

Allison reaches for the holster at her side, shoves it in his face with the safety off.

“BHPD! Put your hands on your head _now_!”

Ennis’s eyes widen dramatically. He rushes to slam the door in her face but Allison doesn’t let him, throwing her body against it so it hits against the wall. The jarring force of it clips him in the ankle, sending him stumbling in his attempt to escape.

Allison doesn’t give him the chance to right himself, kicking out with her foot so it catches him in the back of his knee, sending him crumbling to the floor.

“Hands behind your back!” She demands, hands shaking with the tight grip on her gun.  

He must sense the anger in her voice. Maybe he recognizes her as the daughter of the woman who almost brought him down. 

After a long, tense beat of silence, Ennis complies. He folds his hands over each other behind his back, shoulders slumping in defeat.

It takes far too much control for Allison to lower her gun, flick the safety off, and put it back in her holster. She reaches for the handcuffs at her side and slaps them on his wrist. Allison clears her throat, because she wants her voice to sound hard as diamonds when she says what she’s wanted to for so long, “Ennis Wade, you are under arrest for sex trafficking-”

“I didn’t fucking do anything,” he growls, moving his arms like he’s about to run.

Allison tightens them painfully, digging them into his skin so he has to think twice about moving again. Her heart is pounding, blood rushing in her ears, and it’s some miracle that she’s even able to hear the small, gentle gasp of, “Allison?” from the corner of the room.

Allison looks up quickly, only to see a familiar girl attached to a red face.

Lydia’s staring at her like she’s never seen her before, two parts ashamed and one part afraid. The purple galaxy spread across her eye, the river of red scraped against her cheek, causes Allison’s brain to short circuit.

Ennis must sense her shock; he moves quickly, using his sheer bulk to drive his shoulder into her gut. The bulletproof vest only aids him in digging his weight into her, crushing her against the opposing wall and knocking the wind from her lungs.

She chokes on nothing, gasps for air, but Ennis doesn’t stick around for her to recover.

He’s up and running. By the time Allison can even inhale again, he’s rounded the corner and out of her sight.

She scrambles for the radio at her hip and struggles to relay information to her team in the stairwell between her gasping breaths. They must understand enough; Allison hears a heavy door slam down the hall in the direction she came from.

A gentle hand touches her shoulder, another cups her cheek.

“What on Earth are you doing here, hun?” Lydia whispers, rubbing at Allison’s shoulder.

“I- my job,” Allison heaves uselessly, reaching weakly for the door. “I have to get him-”

“Right,” Lydia says lightly, “You’re very intimidating right now. I’m sure Ennis would just hand himself in if he saw you.”

Allison turns to scowl at her, taken aback by the sight of her face all over again. Something in her chest breaks at the red ring around Lydia’s eye, knows a deep bruise will be there by morning. Allison reaches out, fingers resting pathetically at the curve of Lydia’s jaw because she’s afraid of hurting her any more than the world already has.

Lydia smiles weakly, the motion tugging at the scrape on her cheek, not offering up any soothing words, platitudes, or explanations.

Allison opens her mouth to ask her what the hell she’s doing with Ennis when her radio cracks at her hip.

“Argent?” Braeden’s high, worried voice between them seems to push them further apart. “Come in, Argent? Over.”

Allison looks away from Lydia’s deep stare and grabs at the radio, “I’m here. He knocked the wind out of me but I’ll live. Over.”

“Good,” Braeden says, “Violet is in pursuit of Ennis right now. Is your floor clear? Over.”

Allison’s heart crashes against her ribcage.

If she brings Lydia in, they’ll have to get her to talk about why she was with Ennis. To Allison, who knows that Lydia’s a sex worker and that Ennis is a sex trafficker, the answer is heartbreakingly obvious. It’ll be the same to anyone at the station.

They’ll question Lydia until they’re blue in the face, desperate for anything to finally put Ennis away for good. The idea almost sounds euphoric, but Allison can tell from the tense way Lydia’s been holding her body ever since she started talking to Braeden that Lydia would rather eat glass than talk.

The system is broken. Girls who don’t talk get thrown into the county jail until they decide to cough up an answer suitable to the police. If they don’t give out names, they’re charged with obstructing justice or solicitation, depending on the mood of the arresting officer. Some girls have been locked up for years because they’re too afraid to give up the names of their traffickers.

It's not just their bodies held prisoner- it's their minds. 

Allison looks up at Lydia’s wide, scared eyes. She brings the radio to her lips, clicks the button, and says, “All clear. I’ll meet you in the parking lot. Over.”

Lydia sags against the wall in her relief, clutching at Allison for support.

“Roger. See you soon. Over.”

Allison doesn’t take her eyes off of Lydia as she puts the walkie-talkie back at her hip. Lydia doesn’t look away either.

“Why would you lie?” Lydia asks, voice small.

“I don’t know,” Allison says, instead of admitting how much she cares.

The relief of knowing Lydia’s somewhat safe, for now, almost bowls Allison over. Weeks of worrying about her missing from the street she frequents has caught up with her. She wants to just stay here and stare at her for a little bit longer, just to assure herself she’s okay, but Allison has a job to do, and she needs to get Lydia out of here.

“Do you have anywhere you can go?” Allison asks her, finally standing up from her slouch against the wall. She pulls Lydia with her, hands at her elbow and shoulder, Lydia’s hands wrapped around her in a similar fashion.

Lydia's quiet at that, eyes squinting like she's deep in thought. Just when Allison is about to repeat the question, Lydia's entire face changes; she shrugs with a weak smile.

“Not really,” Lydia says, voice light as if the words don't hurt to admit, “They’ve had me staying here the past few weeks.”

Allison curses, “They’ve moved you to the hotel circuit?”

Lydia nods, looking equally troubled by the news.

Allison didn’t even know Lydia was a Hale girl. She can’t believe any of this, but it’s all right in front of her in Lydia’s sad eyes. She doesn’t _want_ to know why Lydia was in Ennis’s room, but she remembers the stories her mom told her. She thinks she already knows.

She clenches her eyes, fights the urge to chase Ennis down and put a bullet in his brain.

Before even thinking it through, she says, “Walk slow. Take the elevator to the indoor pool level. There’s a door by the sauna leading to the south parking lot. We don’t have eyes there. Do you know how to get to my apartment?”

Lydia nods.

“I have a spare key hidden under my neighbor’s mat. Wait for me there, okay?”

Lydia nods again, quicker this time, and then she’s launching herself at Allison, arms wrapped tight around her neck.

It’s almost reflex to return it, tugging Lydia close to her body. Allison’s arms fall naturally across Lydia’s torso. She wants to keep her here, where she can at least try to keep her safe. The weight of her in her arms is comforting.

Allison suddenly remembers their kiss more vividly than her dreams have shown her, the warmth of Lydia’s lips at the forefront of Allison’s mind. This feels too much like playing with fire, inviting a storm into her home, so Allison pulls away. She gives Lydia a nod and then watches her leave, waits a minute before leaving in the opposite direction.

Allison tries unsuccessfully to shove Lydia from her mind as she meets Braeden downstairs. She lets Braeden’s rare concern cover for how off-balance she is in the wake of tonight. Allison slides herself into her job, let’s her drive to see justice overshadow the ache in her chest, the pulsing beat of her heart that’s tugging her back to her apartment.

In her head, she composes a list of questions she wants Lydia to answer. Her extrapolating brain doesn’t fantasize any comforting answers.

They meet Violet back at the station where she already has Ennis in an interrogation room.

Allison watches from behind the one-way glass, hands curled into fist at her sides, nails digging into her palms.

Basically, they have nothing on him. The statute of limitations from Victoria’s eyewitness statement hit over ten years ago, making him a free man for his sins of the past. He spins some nonsense story with a sharp grin about repenting and changing his ways.

“I’m a man of the church,” he tells Violet, “A born-again Christian.”

He claims he was only staying at the hotel for a few nights while water damage is repaired at his apartment. Braeden calls and his building’s super confirms it, though they both think he’s lying to cover Ennis’s ass. Braeden sends a patrol car to question the man. Maybe they can even get a warrant to see the damage themselves.

Until then, there’s nothing besides their intuition that ties him to the human trafficking at the hotel, except Lydia’s presence in his hotel room. Allison bites her lip so hard it bleeds, the sharp metallic tang bursting on her tongue. It’s too late for Allison to reveal what Ennis was doing without throwing herself and Lydia under the bus.

She considers telling Braeden a random girl escaped when she was grappling with Ennis, but that would arouse their suspicions. Why didn’t she tell her earlier? Why didn’t she chase her down?

Every second that passes without Ennis mentioning his company causes Allison’s spine to relax. She hates what she’s turned herself into, hates this lie that strangles her vocal chords.

When it’s clear that Ennis is too smart to slip up, Violet throws him in a cell and kicks at the water cooler from sheer frustration. They can hold him for twenty more hours, but it’s not looking promising so far. If they can’t find something to charge him with, he walks.

Knowing Ennis, he’ll fade into the darkness for another sixteen years.

Their only hope is the four girls Violet brought in and the loudmouth Braeden caught. Allison worries her already sore lip, hoping at least one of them will cough up Ennis’s name.

If Ennis goes free because Allison has a weak spot...

Allison offers to take interrogation room three with one girl while Violet and Braeden tackle two others, but Braeden stops her before she even gets her hand on the doorknob.

“Your shift ended six hours ago,” Braeden reminds her. “I’m pretty sure the union will come down on me if I let you into that room.”

Allison’s too tired to control the way her face twists at the words, fire churning in her chest.

“I know how hard it is to walk away,” Braeden says before Allison can tell her where she can put her concern. “If it were up to me, I’d let you stay until we have something to nail this sick fuck with, but you’re running on fumes, you’re emotionally compromised, and I need my team to be on their A game for something as big as this. I’m sorry, but that’s my call.”

Allison can tell from the hardness of Braeden’s eyes and the straight rod of her spine that arguing will get her nowhere. Wearing Braeden down will only waste time she could be using to pin Ennis for something.

“Fine,” she spits, “But I want updates. I mean it, Braeden.”

“I know,” Braeden says, relaxing from her power stance only slightly. Clearly, she expected more of a fight. “I want to see this guy locked up as much as you.”

Allison doubts that’s possible. Braeden only read Victoria’s police reports. She doesn’t have her mother’s voice whispering in her ear, a hellish background noise to this already horrifying situation.

Allison gives Braeden one more hard look before she concedes, packing up her items and sliding on her jacket.

Braeden softens at her sharp movements, the frustrated jab of her arms into her sleeves. She steps closer to Allison and says, voice soft, “You did good today. You know how much I hate handing out compliments, so just accept it. You have a fire in you, Argent. Jennifer may have wanted to butter you up with the collar, but inviting you to the raid was my call. I did it because I trust you more than half my squad, especially when it comes to the Hales.”

The words blossom with warmth in Allison’s blood, clearing out the ice that’s slowly grown over her heart.

Braeden’s hand grips Allison’s shoulder, squeezes, “I know you’ve said no a thousand times, but just think about it, okay? You care about these girls, probably too much. You’d do good work here.”

She clenches her eyes tight, letting the words she’s heard a thousand times before wash over her. Somehow, they only sound real coming from Braeden. Allison almost drops everything right there, signs her life over to SVU, leaves Gerard behind, but she _can’t_.

“I have to catch Peter first,” Allison says, opening her eyes. “I have to make him pay. I have to finish what Kate started.”

Braeden’s mouth twists into a smirk, the ghost of a laugh on her face, “I respect that,” she says, stepping away. The air between them returns to normal, the sounds of the station puncturing the bubble of warmth. “Get home safe, Argent. I’ll let you know when we’ve booked this guy.”

Allison wants to believe her, but she knows the likelihood of gathering enough evidence to arrest Ennis  _now_ is heartbreakingly close to zero. She watches Braeden head into interrogation room two, the width of her shoulders, the confidence she carries there, and finds herself hoping against hope that someone will be brave enough to end this cycle of cruelty.

On her way out, she has to walk by the cells, and finds herself watching Ennis. He’s resting against a bench, head tilted back against the stone wall, looking bored out of his mind. Allison would feel better if he looked the slightest bit worried, but the worst thing in his life seems to be the lack of an idle app to keep his thumbs busy.

Just the sight of him makes her sick. Allison steps closer, watches his eyes flutter open and twitch in confusion upon seeing her. After a second, his face settles into a smirk.

“Oh,” he breathes, standing from his slouch against the wall. He walks toward the bars, “It’s you. Victoria’s girl, right?”

Allison’s heart squeezes painfully in her chest.

“Keep her name out of your mouth,” she demands, voice hard.

Ennis laughs at that, like her anger is that of a petulant child. He puts his hands up innocently, “Alright, alright. You know, you kinda look like her when you’re upset.”

Her gun is a heavy weight at her side. It’s easy to imagine how it would feel in her hands, the look in his eye as she presses it against his forehead.

Allison’s not that kind of cop though, so she keeps her shaking hands in fists instead of letting them do what they so desperately desire.

“You’re disgusting,” Allison tells him. She rolls her eyes, mad at herself for letting him get a rise out of her, and turns to head home.

“Wait,” Ennis calls. Her foot stills midair, body taut like a string. His voice drops to a hushed whisper, “Why did you tell them I was alone?”

Allison’s body turns back to face him of it’s own accord, caught like a spider in Lydia’s web. She squints at him, trying to make out the expression on his face.

Why does he look so nervous?

Does Lydia know enough about Ennis to take him down? Allison curses herself again for making such an emotional call.

Allison tries to make her shrug seem casual, forces her voice to be airy, “She looked like she suffered enough for one night. I let her go.”

Ennis stares at her for one second, as if trying to see the lie in her words. He surprises her by suddenly letting out a booming laugh. The noise of it sends chills down her spine.

“Oh, wow, Argent. Guess the apple falls far from the tree, huh?” Ennis says, laughing again. “Your ma must be rolling in her grave.”

The comment troubles Allison in more ways than one. He’s lower than scum, so she tries not to let his cruel words seep into her soul, souring the memories of her mother. But, Victoria’s always been known as a sympathizer for sex workers. Even after she retired, she was a vocal advocate for systemic reform. Allison heard her go on possibly a hundred tirades about how the justice system is too harsh on victims.

So, why wouldn’t her mom be proud of her for making such a lenient call?

“You didn’t even know my mom,” Allison says, instead of trying to figure out what he means. “She’d be happy at the sight of your face behind these bars.”

She kicks at the metal dividing them, reminding him who’s in control here.

“I’ve seen your mom at her darkest,” Ennis says, unphased by the ringing of the bars. “That’s how you really know someone, kid. I know Victoria better than you ever did.”

Allison immediately scoffs at the words. Ennis knows nothing. The entire time Victoria was around him, she was playing a part. He only knows what Victoria wanted him to, and she out-maneuvered him.

“Have fun rotting here,” Allison says.

He’s quiet when she turns to leave, but his words follow her from the station, filling the space of her car with their cruelty. She rolls her windows down as she drives, desperate to escape him and everything he represents.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Braeden doesn't have a canon last name so I'm borrowing from her actress and making her Braeden Tandy :) Thanks, Jeff! Always making my life easier!!!

Allison’s doorknob doesn’t offer her any resistance as she goes to slide her key into the hole. Her blood pressure spikes through the roof, drafting contingency plans in her head. What if there’s a member of the Hale family in there? What if one of Ennis’s goons wants to take revenge? What if someone wanted to get at her files?

It takes her a long second to remember Lydia, beautiful, broken Lydia, who she ordered to flee from the hotel room and into the relative safety of her home. Allison almost falls against the doorframe in her relief.

Quickly, before her neighbors notice the strange behavior, Allison opens the door and hurries inside.

She’s never had someone to come home to before. She’s been living on her own since she was eighteen. It never bothered her before, how cold her home is after a long day, how imposing the quiet becomes. Now, as she watches Lydia in the kitchen, humming along to some music channel on the tv, Allison wonders how she can ever go back to the emptiness.

“Oh!” Lydia startles, stilling in her dance motions as she turns. Allison winces as she finally sees her face; the blossoming bruise smattered across her eye and cheek has turned a nasty, angry purple. Ennis has big fists. Lydia has a tiny face. Allison tries not to stare at it, afraid of reminding Lydia of her terrible ordeal. “I didn’t know you’d be back so soon. I’m making some spaghetti casserole-”

“Spaghetti casserole?” Allison cuts her off, squinting. “I’ve never even heard of that so I doubt I had the ingredients for it.”

Allison only feels safe making the assessment knowing that Lydia has obviously already judged her; when she left for work this morning, Allison only had an empty bottle of ketchup in her fridge and two breakfast hot pockets in her freezer.

Allison’s been planning to grocery shopping for two weeks now, but always just ends up ordering in or getting food with one of the squad.

Lydia smiles indulgently at her and turns back to the bubbling pot of red sauce on the stove, “You didn’t. Don’t worry, I used some money I found in your sock drawer and went to the corner store down the street. Your change is on the counter. You’re _welcome_.”

Allison should probably feel upset that Lydia blatantly admits to snooping around in her drawers, that she took her money without asking, but every negative thought is squashed before it can even begin by the warmth that spreads across her chest like the ocean lapping at the shore. She knows, on some level, this has to be an invasion of privacy, but it’s hard to care when Lydia just looks so happy and carefree.

Allison will let Lydia peer through all of her drawers if it means she never has to find her behind a hotel door again.

Thankfully, instead of saying any of that, what falls out is, “It smells delicious. I don’t think my stove’s ever been used.”

“That explains why it was the cleanest thing in your house,” Lydia scoffs. Her long hair sways in waves down her back, telling Allison she’s shaking her head.

The comment causes Allison to finally look away from Lydia, surprised to find that everything is… clean. Allison’s not a dirty person, as it’s hard to make a mess when she’s rarely ever home, but the fine layer of dust that has accumulated on her surfaces is gone, the floors have been mopped, and Lydia somehow organized shoes by the door that Allison had long since lost in the back of her closet. She neatly places her work shoes by the line-up, afraid to touch anything and ruin all of Lydia’s hard work.

“You’ve been busy,” Allison says lightly, noticing that all of her furniture looks slightly _off_ from where she had movers place them eight years ago.

She doesn’t know what to do with this confusing swell of gratitude in her chest. She swallows it, afraid to scare Lydia away with her flood of _thank you_ and _please stay forever_.

Lydia turns to face her at that, head cocked to the side as if trying to decipher the expression on her face. Allison tries to keep it neutral, doesn’t want to show her how much such a simple gesture means, how Allison hasn’t had someone take care of her in so long, how Lydia of all people shouldn’t be taking care of anyone after the day she’s had, but she must not be successful because Lydia’s smile turns tight.

“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” she says, shoulders falling. She looks all the more tiny, somehow. Lydia turns and looks at the floor; Allison gets a clear view of the angry purple bruise she keeps trying to forget exists. “I just wanted to keep myself occupied, after everything.”

“No, no, no, of course,” Allison practically yells in her urgency to reassure Lydia. She hesitantly takes a step closer to the kitchen, drops her purse and keys to the island counter, “I’m just a bit in shock. I haven’t had someone do anything like this for me in so long. Thank you, really. I appreciate it.”

Lydia relaxes at her words, bit by bit until she finally graces Allison with a smile.

The sight of it makes her knees weak. Allison rounds the counter, drawn to Lydia without even thinking about it. Lydia’s eyes don’t leave her the entire journey. Allison doesn’t stop until she’s able to see the small flecks of brown floating in the green of Lydia’s eyes. Here, she could count her every eyelash.

It’s hard not to think about the last time she was this close to Lydia. Her hands twitch at her side, remembering the feel of Lydia’s skin. She aches to reach out, cup the battered side of her face. It hurts to look at the physical reminder of Lydia’s suffering; she feels a pull to touch it, to childishly kiss it better.

But, she’s an adult. She manages to clear her throat, take a step back, and asks, “Have you been icing it? Your eye? The swelling is going to be killer.”

Lydia rolls her too pretty eyes and turns back to fiddling with the sauce on the stove. Allison relaxes minutely at the sight of Lydia’s unbruised cheek.

“I know how to take care of bruises. Thank you, Dr. Allison.”

“Just a concerned citizen- not a doctor,” Allison smiles ruefully. She leans against the counter, crosses her legs at the ankle, and bites the bullet, “But I guess you know that now, huh?”

Lydia eyes her out of the corner of her good eye, frowns, “Hun, it’s not like it was some secret. If you were trying to hide that you were a cop, you didn’t do a good job.”

“I suspected you knew that first night,” Allison admits, “I just didn’t know for sure.”

Lydia hums thoughtfully, bites her lip, and Allison blushes at how intensely she finds herself staring at the movement. “Sure, it was different seeing you in _full_ cop mode today, but you never had me fooled. You cops are so easy to sniff out. It’s cute how you think no one notices you talking to that blond boy under the bridge every month.”

Allison freezes at the mention of Liam, the grim reapers claw running down her spine. All of the air leaves her lungs like Ennis body slammed her all over again. She stands from her slouch, just to buy herself some time before responding.

She knew she had seen Lydia hanging around by the bay a few times when she met with Liam, but she didn’t know it was enough to piece it together. They were careful, _so_ careful. They only met once a month on rotating weekdays at varying times. It’s a complicated system that Allison had to explain to Liam more than once before he understood it.

And here’s Lydia, casually stumbling upon the biggest landmine of Allison’s investigation.

She tries not to let herself outwardly freak out. Something in her makes it easy to trust Lydia, but, at the end of the day, she’s a Hale girl. No one knows better than them what Peter will do to rats.

Allison doesn’t want to put Lydia in a dangerous situation with her _employers_ , and she definitely doesn’t want to put their trust in jeopardy right now.

To be safe, she shrugs lightly, “I have informants all over the city. Most of them are useless, but if I was _that_ obvious, none of them would even consider working with me.”

Lydia smiles, just for a second, there and gone in the blink of an eye, something Allison wouldn't have even noticed if she hadn't spent hours, days, weeks, fixated on the gentle curve of Lydia's lips. The rapid way her face quickly tumbles down into a frown almost gives Allison whiplash.

"I doubt they wouldn't work for you. I don't think you understand the reputation you have downtown, Allison," Lydia says. Before Allison can ask what she means by that, Lydia asks, “Is that why you let me go tonight? Am I just going to be another nark to you?”

“To be an informant you’d have to actually tell me stuff,” Allison says with a soft, amused laugh. “I didn’t even know you were a Hale girl until tonight.”

“It’s not something to brag about,” Lydia says, voice a touch bitter. She stops stirring, turns to look at Allison in the eyes, “Do you want me to? Be an informant for you?”

There’s an edge to her voice Allison’s never heard before that tells her of the delicate knife she’s walking on right now. One wrong move can be the end of her and Lydia and everything in between.

It would be invaluable, truly, to have Lydia’s intel. Girl’s working the hotel circuit are privy to so much information. The rings are usually run by violent misogynists who only see these girls as property. They would never consider them as the first source of the leak. Cattle don’t often turn on the farmer.

She wasn’t wrong when she told Stiles that these people trust their own. With Allison’s guiding hand, who knows what secrets Lydia could stumble upon that she might not even know are valuable?

She’s tempted to say yes, but only a tiny bit. It’s the greed talking, it’s Kate’s voice in her ear demanding more, screaming for revenge.

Risking this girl who makes her feel soft in a world that expects her to be hard feels like crossing a line she can never turn back from. Liam already haunts her conscious at night. She would never be able to rest if she threw Lydia into the shark tank with blood in the water.

Them meeting like this is dangerous enough. People know who Allison Argent is. People know exactly what Peter Hale has done to her family. If people find out that Lydia knows her, they'll jump to conclusions about Lydia's loyalties. 

Lydia’s caught in the crossfire between two warring families. If Allison had any sense in her, if she had a single selfless bone in her body, she would have Lydia leave right now and never look back.

Allison allows herself to reach out. Lydia doesn’t move away from her hand, but the steel of her eyes doesn’t welcome it, not without her answer. Allison tucks a soft, renegade strand behind her ear, quickly pulls away. She doesn’t deserve to touch Lydia, not like this, not with this canyon between them.

“I just want you to be a girl I met on a rainy night,” Allison whispers. It’s her deepest desire and answer all rolled into one.

Lydia seems to fall at the words, swaying under the weight of what they mean, expression cracking open, revealing the vulnerable girl she hides so well. Lydia swallows thickly, sounds like she’s been gutted as she says, "I can do that."

Allison wishes it was that easy.

It’s hard not to kiss Lydia now, especially with the memory of last time so close to the forefront of her mind, especially with the way Lydia’s eyes keep darting to Allison’s lips. Her mouth goes dry at the thought, the longing burning like a brand over her heart.

It takes all of her strength to step back.

She clears her throat and the atmosphere disperses, the tense, heady energy between them slips back into something manageable.

“I’m going to go change,” Allison says, voice thick. She coughs lightly, “I’ll be back in a few minutes. Call me if you need any help with dinner.”

She doesn’t wait for Lydia’s returning nod, already fleeing the scene like a felon on probation. It’s embarrassing how her every reaction with the girl has so far ended with one of them running away. Allison absently hopes one of them will stay away for good.

Allison’s distracted from her thoughts of Lydia when she opens her bedroom door and discovers it’s received the same treatment as the rest of the house.

If Allison ever were a mess, it would be in her bedroom. Clothes are often left discarded on whatever surface finds them after Allison throws them over her shoulder, where they wait to be retrieved until she eventually runs out of clothes and has to put on a load. She never makes her bed. Boxes of files from work are usually stationed every few feet, discarded when Allison got tired of carrying them.  

Now, the room is immaculate.

Over in the corner, Lydia has piled her five boxes of files in a pyramid, stacked oldest to newest depending on the year scrawled in quick sharpie along the side. She feels a stab of fear plunge into her chest, a familiar sensation whenever anyone touches her files. It’s why she moved them to her home recently, to the annoyance of the BHPD, but Gerard signed off on it so she can’t get in trouble. Though he is loath to tolerate any talk of a mole in the precinct, he agreed people can often be swayed by the many evils in the world.

She had to tolerate an hour lecture on temptation, but Allison eventually got what she wanted. The people who say nepotism is easy have never met her grandfather.

Allison opens the one on the top, just to quell her stammering heart, but doesn’t find anything obviously out of place. She doesn’t have a photographic memory, and she foolishly didn’t rig a booby-trap, so Allison is only left with her instinct.

Her instinct is too infatuated to be completely relied on, but Allison has to believe Lydia wouldn’t betray her trust. It feels foolish to even consider that Lydia would go through her files, especially after how hurt she seemed at the idea of Allison asking her to be an informant, but she would be the world’s biggest idiot to not even bother considering the possibility.

Besides, cleaning the entire apartment would be a great cover for looking for clues. It’s smart, and Lydia hasn’t shied away from letting Allison know she isn’t stupid.

Allison bristles at her own detective mind working in overdrive. Lydia is just a girl with a hard life who wanted to do something nice after Allison risked her career protecting her. It’s not likely that the Hale’s would pluck Lydia from obscurity just to find out what Allison knows.

Besides, Lydia probably has more reasons to hate the Hale family than Allison does, and that’s saying something. Why would she _want_ to work with them? Allison’s face falls, remembering how likely it is that Lydia even wants to be working for them now. If they asked her to check up on Allison, it’s not like she’d have much of a choice.

Wasn’t it Allison herself who just suggested that people always overlook what they share around sex workers?

Allison curses and slams the lid back on her box.

She never even considered this before she found Lydia with Ennis. She never thought it could blow up in her face like this when she first invited Lydia back to her apartment. She’s just being paranoid, that’s all.

But _why_ was Lydia with Ennis?

Ennis has been a distant, silent partner of the ring ever since Victoria named him. He wouldn’t come all the way back to this city just to rough up a new recruit for the hotel circuit. And why was Lydia picked up by the hotel rings anyway? She’s older than their usual choices. Though she doesn’t look it, she’s been on the streets longer than most girls survive it. She’s clearly been smart enough to avoid that circle of hell until now. What happened to make them suddenly move her closer under their control?

Allison’s door slams against the wall when she wrenches it open. She’s unable to control herself, anger and hurt and betrayal exploding in her chest like dynamite and Lydia’s the one holding the matches.

“Was it because of me?” Allison demands. Lydia shoots up from her reclined position against the counters. Behind her, the oven timer continues to count down, unaware of the tension in the room. “Did they find out we know each other? Is that why they moved you to the hotels?”

“What are you talking about?” Lydia asks, eyes narrowed. She looks angry, like she knows what Allison is insinuating but is too afraid to say aloud.

The pinched expression on her face just makes the fire in Allison’s chest burn brighter.

“You said you started sex work when you left high school. That made you, what, 16? 18?” Allison asks. She barrels on before Lydia can even open her mouth, “You look around my age, so that means you’ve had maybe 8? 10 years of corner work? Why would they decide to promote you _now_ , Lydia?”

Lydia smiles meanly, eyes as cold as winter, “Guess my blowjobs finally got better.”

The words are meant as a punch but Allison refuses to let it land.

“Why were you in that room with Ennis?” Allison forces herself to ask through gritted teeth.

“Where is this even coming from?” Lydia asks. She paces in frustration, and Allison has to wonder if she puts the island between them on purpose. “You were the one who let me go! You were the one who told me to come here!”

“Yeah,” Allison says, voice quiet, “And maybe that was a mistake.”

Lydia’s mouth gapes for a long second before she bites, “I never _asked_ you to do me any favors. If I wanted to be interrogated, I would’ve just turned myself into Officer Tandy.”

Allison feels some part of herself desperately begging to stop, that this has all gone too far, that she should’ve played this differently, but it’s like she’s not even in control anymore. She’s too stuck in her detective mindset. Paranoia has become a lover more enticing than Lydia. “How do you know Braeden?”

Lydia aggressively rolls her eyes. She curses quickly and then starts putting on her heels, buckling them at the ankle. She laughs, but there’s no humor in her voice, “Like you said, I’ve been around for a while, _Argent_. I’ve had a few run-ins with SVU.”

The way she says her last name is like a knife in her back. Allison’s never heard it dripping with such venom before. She recoils instinctively, but Lydia’s not even looking at her. She’s heading toward the door, hair bouncing with the force of her anger as she goes.

“Wait, Lydia-,” Allison starts, uselessly reaching out. Regret curls like poison in her chest. “Stop. I’m sorry- I- do you need money for your-”

“Oh, go fuck yourself. Buying me won't make it better,” Lydia snarls, not even looking back as she slams the door.

Allison can hear her heels click-clack down the hallway and out of her life forever.

The oven timer dings, blissfully unaware of the acid in Allison’s veins.

* * *

She wakes up to a sour taste in her mouth and a voicemail from Braeden. They had to let Ennis go, and the low level loudmouth sobered up and got smart. None of the girls they brought in are willing to talk. The security tapes from the hotel lobby don't have an audio recording and, oddly enough, no witnesses are willing to come forward. It's a dead end. It's another failure on the pyre Allison's errecting. 

It’s two weeks before she can meet with Liam again, two weeks of Lydia bubbling under her skin, two weeks of Lydia nowhere to be found. Worry twists and contorts her spine like a monster delighting in her misery. She drives through familiar streets, looking for Lydia’s red hair, knowing she won’t find her. She doesn’t dare to brave the hotel lobbies, knowing that, if the Hales don’t know about whatever is going on with Lydia and her, they will as soon as she sees her.

Allison regrets what she said, regrets even more how she said it. The long day, the confrontation with Ennis, the reminder of her mom, the poison of possible betrayal, the stress of it all toppled over on Allison. She lashed out at the person who definitely didn’t deserve to be on the receiving end of her frustrations.

Allison still has questions about Lydia, is still left staring at puzzle pieces that don’t quite align, but she doesn’t think Lydia is a Hale pawn. If she was there to dig for information, she never would have left at Allison’s probing. She would have said whatever she could have to get Allison back into her trust.

Still, the itch to know more dances in her veins, rippling like a tsunami. She goes to sleep every night worried about Lydia, angry at herself for pushing away a girl in such a vulnerable position.

She can look as much as she wants, but Lydia has made it clear she doesn’t want to be found. Until then, Allison has a job to do.

She waits in the shadow of the bridge, remembering how easily Lydia tore apart her secret meetings with Liam, wishing she had a cigarette even though she stopped smoking after she joined the academy.

Sargent Kate would have never tolerated the smell of smoke on her uniform.

“You’re late,” she says when he finally appears.

The sun has fallen, casting a golden light that streams between high rises and apartment buildings. It should be peaceful here, the sunset kissing the horizon, but all it does is make her anxious. Allison knows how many bodies have been dredged from this bay.

“Sorry,” Liam says, ruffling his hair. It’s grown longer since she last saw it; he wears it with product now, like Derek had in the last picture she took of him. “Hale was being cagey. I had to tell him I was meeting with Brett to get him to back off.”

Allison’s heart stops in her chest, “Did he follow you here?”

She moves her hand closer to the holster at her side, hoping she won’t have to use it.

“No, of course not,” Liam says immediately, jerking back as if insulted. “You think I’m stupid? He had a meeting with another lieutenant tonight. Reyes, I think. Just to be safe, I drove the long way around the city.”

Allison relaxes minutely, reminds herself how long Liam been living a life of danger; he knows how to lose a tail when he needs to. It took her a few tries to find him the first time, after all.

Still, she thinks of Mason in a hospital bed, of Kate in the ground, and keeps her hand close to her side, just in case.

She takes a mental note of the name Reyes; it’s overwhelmingly common but it’s something. She’ll have to look through witness statements tonight to see if anyone name dropped whoever he is.

“Thanks for the heads up with Satomi, by the way,” Liam says after a beat of silence.

Allison winces, recalling the raid she and Stiles operated to pull his undercover agent, “I couldn’t risk using the burner-”

“I was the one who told you about that!”

Allison shushes him, watches a family from the corner of her eye eat ice cream as they walk the length of the bay. Actually, Demarco told his old handler about it before Liam even joined Satomi’s crew. The BHPD has known about Satomi’s deal with the old restaurant chain for close to five years.

Finally, after the family has walked far enough away, she whispers, “We got that intel from someone else. We didn’t want to use it that way but we had to.”

Liam stares at her for a second, eyes wide and disbelieving, before he finally laughs, a broken sound, “Christ, Argent, how many of us have you got out here, doing your dirty work?”

 _Too many_ , Allison wants to say, _not enough_.

“I’m sorry,” she says, putting a hand on his shoulder. He shrugs it off, every bit the angry nineteen year old he should be. “It was necessary. We had to get our guy out of there.”

Satomi isn't even her case and yet she's always dealing with the fallout of it. Allison is not getting Stiles a christmas present this year, that's for sure.

Liam rolls his eyes, “Great. It had better have been worth it, because Satomi is pissed. Peter is happy as a clam but-”

Allison’s unable to stop herself from cutting him off, hands growing moist at the name drop, “Wait, you’ve met Peter Hale?”

Liam’s face pinches in anger, then softens out, “No, not yet. That’s just what Derek told me, but now they’re both suspicious. They want to know how the cops found out and no one’s talking, not even their guys on the inside.”

Well, at least she knows for sure now that both Stiles and her grandfather are clean. They were the only ones besides her who knew about the extraction plan. The list of possible moles is still too long for Allison’s liking, but it’s a mystery for another time. If she tries to figure it out now, her head will spin.

The Hales and Satomi’s having rats in the precinct shifts the playing field too much in their favor for Allison’s liking. She's glad she started bringing her files home ages ago, even if it triggered her fight with Lydia.  

Liam’s still looking fidgeting, face splotchy in red with his anger. He stares away from her, eyes rimmed red and glazed over, lost in the tunnels of his own mind. His arms cross heavy over his chest, knuckles buried into his sides. Combined, it all gives away the true root of his rage.

He’s a kid. He’s a kid and he’s scared and his life is on the line.

She’s supposed to be looking out for him and she made him feel unsafe. The trust she’s worked to build with him is hanging by a mere thread, waiting to snap at any moment. Her heart clenches just looking at him; her desperate pursuit to save this town is a guillotine over his head.

Maybe Stiles had the right idea in pulling his operative.

“Look, I’m really sorry,” Allison tries again. She puts her hand on Liam’s shoulder and, when he doesn’t shug her away, she squeezes. “I know this has been really hard on you. You must’ve been really worried. I’ll be better about keeping you in the loop, okay? Maybe we can invent a code for the burner phone.”

“Maybe,” Liam agrees. He sniffs, wipes at his dry face like he’s afraid he’s lost his tenuous grip on his control.

It kills her to say it, but Allison won’t be able to sleep tonight, haunted by the memory of her mother’s voice ringing out her own traumatic stories, unless she offers “And, if you want, I can pull you from this right now. Just say the word and I’ll get you out of this town.”

Liam finally looks at her again, eyes staring into hers for a long minute. The world has lied to him for so long he doesn’t know how to believe anything anymore.

Eventually, he must see what he needs. He shakes his head, “Nah, I still want this. They need to be taken down, you know?”

Allison moves her hand, rubs it in soothing circles around his back like her mother used to do for her when she was young and couldn’t sleep. Sometimes, she would fight to stay awake just to get more of the freely given affection.

“Yeah,” Allison tells him, “Trust me. I know.”After Liam takes a minute to calm down, they talk about what he’s learned.

He hasn’t met the other lieutenants yet, but he thinks it’s coming soon. She’s not sure what she should be more concerned with, Derek’s complete distrust of him, or Peter’s complete willingness to invite him into the fold. It’s clearly stemmed in trying to get him on his side before Liam backs out and returns to Satomi; the wooing is getting out of hand if Liam’s new clothes are any indication.

Liam says the only thing keeping him from meeting the others are Cora and the advisor. Peter trusts Cora’s judgment implicitly.  

“Any clue on who the advisor is?” Allison asks. The advisor is more of a family mediary, but they’re always there to give the head of the family their wise opinion. Before Peter was head, his sister Talia was. Allison, and Kate before her, has checked Talia’s phone records and bank transactions over and over again but it never leads anywhere. The advisor is always the biggest kept secret in any organized crime family.

“Of course not,” Liam scoffs. It’s about what Allison figured.

So far, he mostly just shadows Derek, and Derek doesn’t really do anything really interesting. At least, not around Liam. They’re keeping him on the fringes now. He’s too much of an outsider to be considered anything but an associate. He’s good for his knowledge and that’s all, for now.

So far, he’s played it smart. He’s refused to give them anything useful until he has their word of his job security. It’s a game of chicken that is undoubtedly driving Peter crazy.

“Remember, you gotta keep them wanting more. Give them enough information to know you’re not just some kid toying with them.”

“I know, I know. Geeze, give me some credit.”

He doesn’t know much else, except that some soldiers are planning to pick up a crate of Chanel purses at the dock tonight that must have fallen off the ship during turbulent waves. Allison rolls her eyes. Peter’s interest in designer brands has grown over the past few years; he definitely has a different style of leading than Talia had.

She’s not going to investigate it; a corporation as big as Chanel can afford to lose a few thousand dollars. If she runs off to look into the first piece of real criminal activity Liam’s overheard, she’ll be confirming their suspicions that he’s a rat.

“Any chance there are drugs in the purses?” Allison asks, just to be safe. The main drug exported by the Hales is crystal meth, which is tricky because it doesn’t really need to be smuggled. Theoretically, it can be made anywhere. For an operation like this, they’d need a superlab, and those are rare to find north of the border. What she knows of the Hales, though, she wouldn’t be surprised to find they have one hidden somewhere.

Liam shakes his head, “Nah. I don’t know how they get the drugs but it’s definitely not with purses. That’s too obvious for an operation this big, you know?”

Allison suspected as much, but it’s nice to have that confirmed by one of the few other people she can talk to about the case. Liam may know crime in a completely different way than her, but his insight is still invaluable.

“Hey,” he says, avoiding her eyes, “I don’t know if I should tell you this, because I don’t have all the facts, but Derek’s been kinda tense the past few days. I think something might be going down soon, something huge, but I haven’t heard much.”

“What _have_ you heard?” Allison asks, mind working in overdrive.

“Just whispers. Nothing concrete. I think Peter’s got some scheme cooking. Derek called it a game changer.”

Allison frowns. It’s not much, but it’s something. The warning is enough to keep her eyes open.

“Use the burner phone if you find anything else out, but only if it’s safe.”

Liam nods eagerly.

They talk about Mason for a bit, how his body has finally fought the infection. The doctors are feeling good about the operation, but they want to let him rest for a few more days.

“The next time I talk to you, I might have a message from him,” Allison grins.

Liam’s returning smile keeps her warm the entire way home. She’s almost able to forget how empty her apartment is when Lydia isn’t there to greet her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing is hard, but it's easier when you're inspired by some truly lovely people. Check out Emily at @allyasavestheday for being the best of friends and literally always pushing me to write. Also, thank you for hating Jeff Davis as much as me. I sincerely don't know what I Would do without you in my life. Definitely check out her fics if you have the time!! She's written some amazing Allison/Erica and is currently working on a Lydia/Cora fic that makes my heart hurt in the best way.

  
The days pass with more of the same, settling into a familiar and comfortable lull that bleeds into weeks. She hasn’t noticed any activity out of the ordinary from the Hales, but they could just be taking their time before their next plan goes off. The Hales are always cautious, especially with big moves.

At work, when the station is quiet and her coworkers are out on calls, she’ll type Lydia’s first name into her computer, scowling at the thousands of results and cursing herself for not getting her last name. She hasn't seen her since that night, eye as purple as a plum. She tries not to let herself think about it because, if she does, the anxiety suffocates her. When girls go missing around here, they’re rarely found.

When that comes up empty, she’ll look through hundreds of arrest reports, trying to find any description that matches Lydia’s red hair and green eyes.

She never does. It relieves her as much as it scares her.

How can someone go from being everywhere to being nowhere?

It’s harder at night when the wanting is a physical ache. She replays Lydia’s every word over and over in her head, trying to find some sort of clue. Was there something in the inflection of her voice when she mentioned her pimp? Was there a code hidden in the story of her past she gave Allison like a gift? Could her handler have gotten mad at her for not bringing back any money, punished her to teach the other girls a lesson?

Allison’s a detective, it’s who she’ll always be. She can find a mystery even when there isn’t one. It’s why she’s in this situation at all. It’s why she worries she’ll never see Lydia again.

It’s not healthy, her fixation on this girl. She tells herself it’s not romantic or cute. She barely even knows anything concrete about Lydia; the girl is practically a fantasy for her, escapism dressed in seduction.

It’s obsessive. There are plenty of other things she should be focused on, like the sudden and incomprehensible flood of Hale girls on the streets at 7pm.

At first, Allison thinks it’s a botched raid. They’re all Hale girls, part of the sex trafficking ring so tight no one can take it down, not even Allison’s mom. It’s always been known as a well-oiled unit, every part working perfectly in sync.

For the first hour, Allison’s phone wouldn’t stop ringing. Everyone assumes the hotel owners stopped getting paid to look the other way. The droves of women walking the streets at night must be due to the hotels kicking them out of their lobbies, right?

Except the girls tell it differently. The ones who have been brought in before are all flagged as Hale girls, so whenever one is brought in, Allison and Braeden’s desk phones get a call. Braeden has Tuesdays off, though, so everything is on Allison. It’s complete pandemonium. After the eighth call from the same station, Allison drives to the downtown precinct herself.

When she gets there, she finds something she would have never expected. Her name’s Heather. She’s twenty-one. She just wants to go home.

Allison leans against the wall of the interrogation room, watching while a beat copy asks the girl a few questions. When Allison gets there, the poor thing is shackled to the metal table, as if all 105 traumatized pounds of her is much of a threat. Allison personally unshackles her, giving the cop a mean look in the process.

She says she was taken from Portland, Oregon when she was sixteen. The I-5 corridor is home to some of the most disgusting and depraved acts known to humankind; girls are shuffled up and down the coast as the ring dictates.

“They shut it down,” Heather says, voice wobbling like she’s afraid to hope this isn’t a dream. “Everything was chaos. Some guy was busting into the room. He said we could leave, we were free.”

Allison’s hand twitch at her sides, heart stuttering and tumbling her chest.

They’re free. They’re all free.

Lydia’s free.

Allison clenches her shaking hands, forces herself to stay in the moment with Heather instead of running out the door to find her.

Without the lieutenants lining their pockets, the hotels kicked them out. Their pimps didn’t take kindly to that; the soldiers that dealt with them on the day-to-day level were furious for losing such a high paying command. Suddenly, the girls were being beaten like they never had before.

They’re seen as product; girls deemed good enough to work the hotel circuit are put on a strict diet and fitness plan. If they are to be punished, it’s done with tasers and cattle prods, things that won’t leave marks.

John’s get squeamish if the girls are covered in bruises. Being confronted with the reality of what their money is paying for can make them rethink their decision. Unfortunately, it mostly just drives the price down.

The issue, besides the moral one, is that the soldiers don’t know how to run a big operation like this. They’re used to getting orders down from a chain of command. Suddenly, they’re in complete control, and they’re botching the whole thing.

“But you weren’t allowed to leave?” The cop asks.

Heather shakes her head, “The ones who tried to run were made an example of. A lot of us are going to be sold to the Satomi’s. I don’t- I don’t know what’s going to happen to the rest. Please, can I call my mom? I haven’t talked to her in so long. When they took me, they used my phone to text her such mean things. She thinks I hate her.”

“In a minute,” the cop says, holding up his hand. Allison watches tears drop from Heather’s eyes, freed from one servitude only to be brought into another. Everyone only wants to use her for what she can give them. “Tell me more about-”

“Enough,” Allison says, voice hard as steel. She pushes away from the wall, not even looking at the red malice on his face. The older men always hate it when she pulls rank on them, but Allison doesn’t care. She doesn’t have the patience to placate his ego, not when she has a whole quarter of the Hale empire crumbling at her feet. She has to dig through the rubble; she doesn’t have time to hold his hand through empathy lessons. “She’s not the enemy here.”

The man sputters, “She was arrested while servicing-”

“She was arrested for being raped,” Allison cuts him off. At the word, Heather falls in on herself, clenches her eyes tight; a wounded sob rips from her throat. How long has it been since anyone acknowledged what was happening to her? Allison presses a comforting hand to her shoulder. “Drop the charges for every working girl you bring in tonight. Offer them phone calls to their parents and only then can you ask for a statement. I want SVU agents here now to help. These girls are victims. Treat them like it, or else you’re pushing them right back into the arms of their abusers. Come on.”

Allison guides the young, shaking girl out of the room.

After she sets her up with a shock blanket, a phone, and a woman officer to babysit her, Allison finds an empty bathroom stall.

She presses her back against the cold metal, grounds her shaking hands with a handicap bar, and finally lets herself exhale. The rattling, anxious breath she’s been holding since she got the first call escapes. The room feels small now, the air heavy with her worry.

She can’t believe this. Tears flood her eyes. She paces the stall like a caged tiger, lungs moving too fast to actually take in any oxygen.

This can’t be real. This has to be some beautiful dream.

Allison gives herself a minute, lets herself acknowledge the constant ache she carries flow through her entire body, lets the worry and stress escape from her being. She lets herself cry like she so rarely gets so, unsure and nervous and afraid but so, so happy.

After, she pulls it all back in, locks it tight in a vault and throws away the key. The human moment is over; for now, she has work to do.

It’s supposed to be Braeden’s day off, but she answers on the first ring.

“Have you heard?” Allison asks, not wasting time with pleasantries.

“It’s fucking anarchy out here,” Braeden says. Allison can hear noises of the street in the background, cop cars, radio feedback, and crying women. “There has to be at least 500 girls loose in the city right now. I had to ghost a tinder match I’ve been planning to meet up with for weeks but this is so worth it. They’re all free.”

“Only if we can get them before they’re sold to Satomi,” Allison warns. She taps her nails against the metal of the stall, focuses on the sound to ground her. “We have to round up as many as we can. Once they’re back with people who know what they’re doing, they’ll be lost again.”

“I hear you on that,” Braeden says. Allison hears her curse under her breath, “I can’t believe this. I’ve never even heard of anything like this. Why would he just let them go?”

Allison bites her lip, “I don’t know. I’m afraid to question it. I just want to get as many of them out of the city as possible.”

“I think we have to question it,” Braeden says. The background noise grows dull, and Allison hears a car door shut. “Look, this is amazing, don’t get me wrong. This is possibly the greatest night of my life, but you know as well as I do that Hale wouldn’t just give up an operation as big as this for nothing. Are we just supposed to believe the guy got a conscious? His family’s been selling women’s bodies for over a decade, and who knows how long before the police got wind of it.”

“I know,” Allison says. She takes a deep breath, mildly amused at how she and Braeden have changed places, “I just want to focus on the girls for now. Maybe we can piece something together with their statements. Maybe we were getting too close to figuring something out and he panicked.”

Braeden snorts, “I doubt that. He’d probably just have one of us assassinated before giving up a billion dollar organization.”

Allison grows quiet at that, thinking of Kate and her manic smile the night before she was found with a bullet in her forehead, of Victoria and the knife in her heart, mouth wide in shock.

Braeden, catching her mistake, rushes to say, “Come on, you know this case better than anyone. There has to be something we’re not seeing. You know I’m all about the girls. I don’t give a fuck about Hale, I’ve always left that part to you, but I don’t want to get my hopes up just to have them crumble again.”

Allison bites her lip, begs her mind to think of something, anything. She can't think of a single, goddamn thing that would make sense. Even if this is the divine move Liam tried to warn her about, there’s no logic to it. Braeden’s right. Giving up such a big piece of the Hale pie is basically career suicide. The sex industry alone makes him billions a year.

“Look,” Braeden’s voice fills the silence again, “I’ll take care of this end. You focus on Hale and what this means going forward. Tonight’s important, but there will always be a tomorrow to prepare for. If we want to beat this guy, we have to think three moves ahead.”

The idea of leaving all of these girls at the hands of cops who don’t understand, who would rather lock them up and use force to get them to talk like so many have before, who would make them trade their bodies for their freedom, makes her want to vomit. This is possibly the biggest night in the history of this investigation. She’d never forgive herself if she spent it pouring over files she’s already read a hundred times instead of helping these women escape.

Allison snorts, “You think I’m just going to let you handle this all on your own? I’ve missed ten calls since we’ve been on the phone. We’ll handle this together, and tomorrow we’ll think our way out of this.”

Braeden calls her a punk but doesn’t waste any more time arguing.

Allison almost can’t breathe when she gets to the heart of the downtown district. The energy and chaos in the streets is insane, clouding her lungs with anxious breaths. Police vehicles have the entire district locked down. Civilians are in a panic; the girls are even worse. The whole scenario looks like a grand scale raid. Every precinct in the area is doing as much as they can, but everyone’s still stretched thin.

Breaden’s captain seems to have claimed the leadership position due to this being SVU’s field, but all of the other captains are tripping over each other, making this more about their egos than the victims. Gerard, especially, is throwing his weight around like he owns the place, all because his squad is working the Hale case.

The madness of it all makes Allison itch to yell at anyone who crosses her path, but her energy is best reserved for helping. She hands out trauma blankets, takes statements, and passes around cheap, disposable flip phones. She forces herself to look deep into the haunted eyes of every girl she passes, commits their faces to memory, and vows to not let them go without justice.

And, if she can’t stop herself from looking for Lydia, she keeps that to herself.

She doesn’t know what kind of game Peter Hale is playing, but she’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. At least for now, anyway.

After girls have been decommissioned, a bus takes them to the nearest station. There, they are to meet with a social worker who is supposed to help them make arrangements to get home. Some girls are being moved to witness protection for what they know; they’ll be useful if this goes to court.

When, Allison forces herself to correct. She’s long lost faith in the broken system, but she still has to hope. How else can she make it through the day?

But there are other girls, ones who don’t believe this is all real, ones who’ve been saved just to be thrown back into the system before, ones who don’t have anything to go back to. Depending on who picks those girls up determines what happens to them. The ones who don’t have any more patience after a long night will probably try to book them. The others might just drop them off at the station to be dealt with later. Some will be shepherded to group homes, halfway houses, or homeless shelters.

Either way, it’s a long night and it feels like it’s never going to end.

Allison’s been working for two hours when she hears someone cuss. The noise is nearby, buried under police sirens and megaphones. It’s a male voice, deep; her instincts twist in her gut. Allison follows, heading around a corner to find two young, male rookies fighting with a woman.

“Did you just spit on me?” one asks, face gnarled in disgust. “You better not have some disease, you stupid tr-”

“Officer,” Allison cuts him off, stalking forward. The two immediately straighten up as they see her. When she gets closer, she can tell they’re from her precinct. It makes her disgusted to know they come from her bullpen. “Is there a problem here?”

“No, ma’am,” the second one sputters. He’s shorter than her, squirrely. She doubts he’s going to make it a year. This job has a way of eating people alive. “This suspect just isn’t cooperating, ma’am.”

“Victim,” she sighs, having already made this correction nine times tonight. She should talk to Braeden about doing a seminar, but she thinks more than an HR meeting is going to be needed to change the attitude of society toward sex workers, especially those forced into it. “Why don’t you two go see if blanket distribution needs some help. I can take it from here.”

The two don’t waste time leaving her eyeline. The young ones are always nervous around anyone with the last name Argent. Most people are in this town. One word from her to the right people can make or break their burgeoning careers.

When they’re gone around the corner, Allison turns to the woman, “I’m really sorry about them. They shouldn’t have been talking to you that way. Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” the woman says, rolling her brown, tired eyes. “Like I was trying to tell those two assholes, I didn’t work for the Hales. I’m just out here trying to make a living, okay? I need to get home to my kids and y’all won’t let me leave.”

Allison asks her a few more follow up questions, just to be safe, but the woman checks out as a free agent. Allison gives her a card in case she hears anything or needs help and flags down an officer she’s worked with before and trusts to drive her home.

After they’re out of sight, Allison lets herself fall back against a building, letting out a breath. The emotional toll of tonight is almost too much. It aches in a good way, though, like the burn of a muscle after it’s been overworked. The pain is part of growth. Even if it’s hard now, it’ll be better for everyone tomorrow.

Allison smiles at the concrete below her feet, small and secret, and thinks of how proud Victoria would be right now.

She only gets a minute to herself before her phone is ringing at her side. Allison sighs and checks the caller ID. It’s Scott so she doesn’t let it go to voicemail.

“Hey,” he greets her, voice bright as if tonight hasn’t been complete chaos. “I’ve got a vic here who says she knows you. Says her name is Lydia?”

Allison’s heart stops in her chest, hand crushing the phone against her face in a death grip. Relief cracks in her chest and pours through her veins, chasing away all things cold and dark that hide there.

“I know her,” Allison forces herself to say around the rock in her throat. She grips her forehead, forcefully shoves every emotion strangling her down and asks “Where are you?”

Scott stays with Lydia the entire two minutes it takes her to meet them three blocks away. Lydia’s sitting on the hood of a cop car, hair in a knot at the back of her head, bottom lip split. She smiles a little as Allison appears around the corner, waves timidly like everything isn’t terrible, like vicious words hadn’t been traded between them just five weeks ago.

God, it hurts to look at her. Pushing down the fear, the anger, is like swallowing arsenic; she has to because she can’t do her job, can’t put away the people who did this to a creature so beautiful if she’s compromised.

She thinks she always will be, when it comes to Lydia, and everything she represents.

“Thanks,” she makes her mouth say to Scott, purposefully avoiding Lydia’s eyes. “I’ve got it from here.”

He smiles kindly at her, warm eyes not suspecting a thing, and leaves to talk to another victim.

Allison waits until Scott’s out of earshot before she lets herself actually look at her. It takes all her self restraint to not grab her, to hold her, to hold in all the apologies she’s thought of in their time apart.

This is stupid. She’s stupid. There are so many bigger things to worry about right now, and she barely even knows Lydia, and-

“Are you okay?” Allison asks, instead of doing something foolish in front of all of these people. “Sorry, that’s stupid to ask, but-”

“It’s not stupid,” Lydia says, kindly. She moves her foot so the toe of her shoe is pressed against Allison’s knee. The touch is nothing, it’s not even skin to skin, but it means everything right now in the midst of all of this madness. All the warmth in her body is redirected, sending her knee throbbing against the top of Lydia’s red heels. “I’m better than I was. That’s what’s important right now.”

“Your lip,” Allison whispers, fingers twitching at her side. She wants to touch it, to show Lydia the world can be gentle, too, even with all of its cruelty.

Lydia smiles; this one meets her eyes, “That’s just what I get for having a smart mouth.”

The way she brushes it off, easy as breathing, makes Allison frown. First the black eye, now the lip- why does she always have to see Lydia in pain like this?

“Do you- what happened?” Allison asks. She knows she has a job to do, but it’s hard to focus when all she wants to do is cry.

“Don’t worry about that,” Lydia says quickly, “Officer McCall already took my statement. I didn’t want you to hear it all like that, all… clinical.”

It’s probably selfish of her to feel relief so swift it strangles her. She wants to hear Lydia’s story, wants to share the heavy, burdening load of pain this girl must carry with herself every day, but Allison doesn’t think she could handle it tonight. Not like this. Not surrounded by crying girls and cop cars and with Gerard, only twenty feet away, looking over at her with a tight expression of endless expectation.

“Can you get me out of here?” Lydia asks, breaking her staring match with Gerard.

Allison’s heart twists at the way Lydia’s voice wavers, like she’s about to cry, like another minute surrounded by this tragedy will be the end of her, but she forces herself to gesture all around them, “I can’t just leave,” she breathes, as if the mere idea will cause her heart to collapse, “Let’s just get you on one of the shuttles, they’ll take you to the station-”

Lydia’s hand shoots out, her nails digging into Allison’s palm like claws, “No!” She hisses, forcing Allison’s eyebrows to hit her hairline. It takes a second, but Lydia’s eyes soften, her hand relaxes. Allison watches as her shoulders slump, becoming something so small and full of hurt that it kills her to look at, “Please, I-I can’t go back there. I can’t risk being sent to jail again. And those cops, they’re not like you, they’re all so-”

“I know, I know,” Allison soothes. Every nerve in her body urges her closer. She wants more than anything to wrap her arms around Lydia to anchor her, to hold her and tell her it’ll be okay, but she can’t risk it. Even the tiny hand desperately clutching her own is an arrest warrant. “I promise, no one is getting arrested tonight. We’re working out deals. All you have to do is talk-”

Lydia chokes at the word, looks at Allison like she’s splashed her with the acidic sting of betrayal, “And what if I don’t talk? What if I know they’ll find me, and kill me, and maybe prison is better than what Hale will do to me? What then, Allison?”

It all fucking hurts, is the thing.

There’s never a right answer. The system Allison is chained to wasn’t built to handle the complexity of humans. It takes a look at a gray area like Lydia and slaps handcuffs on her.

“I-” Allison says, uselessly, choking on her own inadequacy, drowning in the suffering that swims in Lydia’s watery eyes.

“Allison,” Lydia whispers, the same tone that held Allison captive that first night, her name honey sweet and wanting as it drips from Lydia’s split-lip like she’s the only one who has any right to say it, “Please.”

Maybe it’s how empty Allison felt when Lydia slammed the door to her apartment all those weeks ago. Maybe it’s the way Lydia’s hand feels so small and soft in her own. Maybe it’s the way Victoria hangs like a noose around Allison’s throat tonight of all nights; Lydia’s red hair burns so bright it’s almost hard to look at the memory that hides in the embers of those flaming strands.

She’s weak. She guides Lydia through the rubble and wreckage of the Hale empire, puts her in her car, and leaves.

They’re silent the whole car ride. The only reason she knows Lydia is following her up the stairs is her hand still clutching hers.

She sits her down in front of the sofa, puts on Jeopardy, and tells her she’ll be back soon.

“Are you sure you’re okay with me here on my own?” Lydia asks, her words twisted with sarcasm and a bitter bite.

Allison pauses, pushes the renegade strands that have escaped her tight ponytail behind her ears, and says, “I never should have said those things to you. It wasn’t okay. I’m- I’m really sorry I drove you away.”

The words hang in the air between them, floating like they don’t know where to go, but they seem to sink into Lydia, softening the sharp edges, allowing her to settle deeper into the couch cushions, “It’s okay. I get it. What’s even in those files that you don’t want me to see, anyway? Kid murderers? Necrophiliacs? Serial killers?”

Allison fakes a laugh, shrugs tightly, “Worse.”

The fact of the matter is, Lydia knows the city in a way Allison never will. In some ways, she knows it better, and that's why she knows it worse. Lydia knows the dark bowels of it. She sees the dirt and the greed firsthand. The stuff that Allison can barely fathom, Lydia has probably seen.

She doesn’t want to talk to Lydia about the case or the Hales or anything, as helpful as it might be to get her perspective. But, she doesn’t want to risk turning her into an informant or a witness. She wants to keep Lydia separate from that, even though it seems impossible and overwhelming to try to untangle the two. There is nothing in her life that Peter Hale hasn’t ruined; she doesn’t want him to touch this too.

But, how can she separate them when it’s Lydia’s reality? Lydia doesn’t have the privilege of dissociation; the gift of escape is all Allison wants to gift back to her.

Her phone rings in her limp, useless hand. It’s Braeden, texting to ask where she is.

She leaves Lydia with money for pizza and offers her a shower. Lydia sends her off with a kind smile and a wink.

Returning to the battlefield is harder this time with her heart tugging her home to the warmth of Lydia on her couch, the memory of months ago with Lydia’s lips scorching against her own. She stays though, working well into the morning. Her knee pulses, like her heart has dropped to her kneecap.

The sunlight crawls inch by inch through every crack and column, rising slowly over the rows of buildings as it climbs to its full height, illuminating the dark grasp of the city to the light. It takes a long time to get the girls sorted and then processed. Caseworkers are called in by the busload to handle all of them. They run out of shock blankets around 4 am. They run out of sanity around 5. Allison is beyond tired and her blood has been replaced with burnt, bitter, black coffee when Scott pulls her toward the door with him.

“We’re escaping,” he says, “If you stay here any longer, you’re going to die.”

“From a broken heart,” Allison scoffs, tugging lightly at his hand at her elbow, “I need to be here. These girls need me.”

“Second shift has been trying to get us out of here for hours now,” Scott argues, herding her now with wide hands and a soft voice, “Allison, you have to take care of yourself before you can save anyone.”

Allison opens her mouth to argue, to ask how he can bear the pain of leaving, when Stiles walks by and quips, “Guys, come on, get out here. It’s pretty much just boiling down to paperwork and I so do not want to have to be the one to explain this clusterfuck.”

“Yeah, well I’m in charge of this clusterfuck,” Allison says, voice bitter. “Those sloppy files are going to be my problem tomorrow.”

Stiles and Scott share a sympathetic wince.

“I thought you and Braeden split the trafficking ring?” Scott asks, still slightly nudging her out of the crumbling building.

“Sorta,” Allison says. She finally frees herself from his urging, choosing to walk ahead of him and out the doors without his guidance, if only to save her pride. “It’s still Hale related, so I need to keep track of it. She just works it from a different perspective. We share notes.”

Stiles whistles, “See, I wish my Sex Crimes counterpart would be as cool as Braeden. Meredith is kind of an asshole. She never shares her files with me.”

“To be fair, Satomi’s trafficking operation isn’t nearly as big as Hales,” Scott says.

They’re out in the parking lot now, wandering toward the vague direction of where they parked their cars. It was all kinds of chaos earlier, shepherding people back and forth from the station, driving 80 mph between here and downtown with their sirens on. The city has been practically on shutdown all night, police force spread too thin to handle civilians. Here, in the early dawn of morning, it’s so peaceful it’s almost hard to remember the panicked breaths she allowed herself between victims.

It almost feels wrong to hear birds chirping, like a lie whispered between pink lips.

“Still, it’s vital to my case,” Stiles says, huffing. He checks his phone, curses, “See, now you two made me late. I gotta get going.”

“Hey,” Scott tries to make his voice hard, croaks around the sleepiness that strangles him, “You get some sleep, okay? You were working hard last night.”

Stiles turns backward as he walks and Allison’s heart speeds up, mentally recalling every time she’s seen him trip like a movie montage. He somehow manages to gracefully step over a pothole despite not seeing it as he waves his phone in the air, “Justice never sleeps, Scotty. Got a tip- something’s up with one of Satomi’s men by the bay.”

Something lodges itself in her throat at the mention of Satomi and her meeting spot with Liam, but she tries to play it cool. She swallows, coughs out, “Oh?”

Stiles’s phone goes off again. He curses and turns around, speeding now toward the rickety jeep he insists on driving every day, “I gotta go. I’ll text you guys, okay?”

Scott waves after him, ignorant to the storm swirling in Allison’s gut; he calls, “Drinks later?”

“Fuck yes,” Stiles chirps, as he climbs into his seat with his lanky limbs, “I definitely need it after all of this.”

Don’t they all? If Allison’s heart wasn’t trying to crash through her rib cage, she’d probably say something in solidarity, would probably offer to buy the first round, but she can hardly breathe let alone think.

She steps away from him, mumbles some paper-thin excuse, and stumbles toward her car, the fog in her mind making it impossible to see straight.

Is it Liam? Is Liam dead? Or is this a sign? Do the Hale’s know? Is Peter toying with her? Is it a message?

Her aorta is twisting into a knot. Her lungs flutter faster than a hummingbird’s wings.

In the safety of her car, she’s unable to stop herself from flinging open her glovebox and digging for the burner phone she stored in there. She dials the only number she knows by heart, each second it takes to ring dragging on and on until she has aged at least fifty years.

Eventually, a familiar, sleepy voice says, “Hello?” in her ear. The relief sweeps through her like a heavy punch; she collapses against the steering wheel, breathing ragged and sharp. Her lungs are full of glass; each breath aches with a sharp stab.

“Thank god you’re alright,” Allison exhales into the phone, voice like gravel.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Liam asks, more awake now. She hears rustling as if he’s reaching for pants or a shirt. “Did something happen?”

“I don’t know,” she says, “I don’t- I don’t know. Someone at the station working on the Satomi case just got a tip about one of Satomi’s men near the bay. I thought- fuck.”

“Shit,” Liam hisses. There’s scrambling now, and then another curse, “I just checked my other phone. I have like 12 missed calls from Brett. I’ll call him and try to figure this out. If I find anything, I’ll call you back on the other burner, okay? I gotta dump this one, now.”

“Yeah,” Allison agrees, finding it hard to worry about the phone when she thought her hands were covered with his blood only 48 seconds ago. “Be safe, okay? Don’t end up another body in that bay.”

“Working on it,” Liam says, forcing out a little laugh to soften the blow. It still lands, though, beating across her head how much she’s asking him to risk, the things she’s asking him to do. “Thanks, Argent. Watch out for my call, okay?”

She tells him she’ll probably be asleep, but to definitely let her know if he’s found anything. They schedule a different time and place to meet, now that the Bay has been compromised.

Then, she sends him back out into the world of violence and bloodshed, knowing full well she can’t do a damn thing to protect him.

Her door is unlocked when she gets home, which is strange only because she made sure to lock it when she left, paranoid someone would come looking for Lydia. Allison feels her chest constrict, worried Lydia has left her, but finds her sound asleep inside.

Only, she’s asleep in Allison’s bed.

The light trail of light coming in through the window falls radiantly on her face; she looks so calm while she’s asleep, jaw relaxed, plush, split lips parted delicately. A gentle snore rolls from her. The sight of her with damp hair, resting in Allison’s academy shirt, makes her heart flutter.

Allison grabs some pajamas and changes in the bathroom, afraid of making too much noise and waking her up. Afterward, she grabs her dirty clothes and the hamper in her bedroom to throw a load on before going to sleep. A rude part of her says she’s only doing this to trick Lydia into thinking she’s a mature adult and not a slob, but she’s not able to refute that.

When she opens the washer lid, Allison’s surprised to find a small bundle of clothes already in there. They’re the white shirt and black shorts the girl had been wearing earlier, when Allison found her sitting atop a cop car. She reaches in to move them over to the dryer but stops when she sees the small patch of blood.

The white shirt is speckled with red patches, making everything in Allison ache. Lydia must have faced untold horrors tonight. Every girl she talked to, every survivor told the same story. The girls in the hotel circuit are usually treated better than the corner girls, rarely touched if anything other than electricity, skin kept pristine and markless. Tonight, all of them had some kind of bruise, some broken noses, some broken fingers, some type of sign of the brutality of a sinking ship.

The pimps, angry at suddenly being out of a job, desperately grappled for any form of control and did anything they could to keep the girls under their thumb and the money coming in.

Allison stares at the blood, Lydia’s blood, and can’t stop the tears that come to her eyes. She drops it back into the washer, moves the shorts to the dryer, and, for the first time in her life, sorts through her clothes to find her whites. She throws them in with Lydia’s shirt and dumps as much bleach as she can into the machine, hoping the stain will be gone by the time Lydia wakes up and she won’t be forced to confront what happened last night.

After that’s all done, Allison grabs a slice of leftover pizza. She grimaces at the toppings, mentally reminding herself to mock Lydia for liking Hawaiian when she wakes up, and nukes it. After she smells like pineapple and bacon, she has to finally deal with the elephant in the room.

Or, rather, in her bed.

Allison stares at Lydia’s slumbering body. Surely she meant to fall asleep here, right? She knows Allison has a spare bedroom. She even slept in it last time. She must have done this on purpose. It’s possible she forgot, of course, but this room is distinctly Allison. From the clothes strewn all over the floor to the pile of boxes in the corner, this room is obviously lived in. The spare room down the hall is kept immaculate, if only because it’s never used.

As if sensing she’s being stared at, Lydia’s eyelashes begin to flutter gently against her cheeks. Then, she stretches, groaning as her stiff muscles move.

Allison freezes, fight or flight telling her to bolt or hide, anything is better than being caught watching her, but Lydia’s green eyes settle on her before she can make up her mind.

“Hey,” Lydia says, voice thick with slumber and Allison feels her heart melt. Lydia yawns, rolls on her side, and stares up at Allison through her eyelashes in a way that makes her knee pound, remembering her light touch only hours ago, “Sorry for stealing your bed. I just didn’t want to be alone and it smelled like you.”

Her entire body contracts at the words, a shiver running up her spine.

“It’s fine,” she says, voice a tad too breathless. She fiddles with her hands, trying to pretend she hasn’t spent the last five minutes debating if she should just sleep in the guest room, “Sorry for waking you up.”

“I’m glad you did,” Lydia says immediately. The simple words burn Allison from the inside out. Lydia pats the mattress next to her, as if their roles are reversed, as if Lydia now owns her bed and Allison is merely a guest, “Come on. I like to be the little spoon.”

Allison can’t be expected to fight a request like that.

Tentatively, she creeps into the bed, holding herself carefully poised like this is all an act and Lydia will tell her she was just kidding. When that doesn’t happen, she lets herself relax into the mattress, as much as she can.

Thing is, Allison’s never actually shared a bed with someone. She hasn’t dated anyone since high school, and the thought of sneaking someone into her parent's house would be enough to send her into a panic attack. Just thinking about all of her parent’s guns…

Any time she’s been with people, she’s never stayed the night, always having a convenient excuse of a cop’s erratic schedule to leave early.

Lydia doesn’t seem to mind how tense she is, flopping easily onto Allison’s chest like she’s done it before, like they do this every night. Allison’s jaw clenches as Lydia snuggles close, so light in her arms it’s almost scary. Her hair hits Allison in the face, the smell of her own shampoo wafting like a punch. This close, though, she can smell something that’s distinctly Lydia, and she has to stop herself from going in for another huff.

She’s ridiculous. She’s turning into a creepy pervert. She’s taking advantage of the situation. Lydia is traumatized and scared and Allison is preying on her-

“Can you make your mind shut up?” Lydia asks after a few minutes, snuggling closer. Her entire body is a line of heat down Allison’s side. She is acutely aware of every area they touch. Her knee has nothing on this. “I can literally hear you thinking.”

“Sorry, I just- it’s been a long day,” Allison says, finally, not wanting to admit to where her mind was.

She lets her arm come down, slowly wrapping around Lydia’s back until it rests comfortably against the soft cotton material of Allison’s shirt. Allison almost wants to find a way to keep her here. At least she wouldn’t get slapped around anymore.

Lydia looks up at her, and her face contorts, twists into that wicked grin she gave Allison that first night, “Maybe we can do something to take your mind off of it, then.”

“No,” Allison says immediately, then, more gently, “Not- You- I can’t- Tonight-”

Lydia rolls her eyes and, when Allison keeps stuttering, she leans forward and kisses her.

The memory that’s been playing nonstop in her head is nothing compared to the reality.

Her head swims as Lydia leans into her. She stops breathing, only starts again when Lydia moves to pull back. She’s unable to stop herself from surging forward, tangling a hand in Lydia’s damp hair. The other flies to her hip, finding the skin of her thigh warm like fire as she touches her, but she’d rather let herself burn than stop.

She feels Lydia’s lips smile against hers, causing her stomach to swoop. Allison has dreamed about kissing Lydia again for months now, fantasizing about the shape of her lips, daydreaming about the way they once felt against her own, how Lydia’s voice was so low as it whispered into the space between them, but all of that pales in comparison to her now. Their first kiss might as well been a peck on the cheek as Lydia fists a hand into Allison’s shirt, like she’s desperate to keep her close, like she’ll drown unless she holds on.

Allison’s been kissed before, but never like this, never this slow and desperate. Her hand is hot against the back of Allison’s neck, lips touching hers with a reverence most save for worship. It leaves Allison shaking, exhaling through her teeth in a sharp breath when Lydia moves to kiss along her jaw.

The small pecks are so gentle they ache, like Lydia has reached into her chest and squeezed her heart with her tiny fist.

Time seems to stop, each second slow and agonizing in the best way. Allison drags her back up with a hand on her chin, kisses her back and pours every thought she’s ever had about her into it. Lydia nips at her lips, a teasing bite, arching against her until there is no space between them.

Allison finds herself missing the taste of Lydia’s lips even as she has them pressed against her own. She wants to cherish each second like a gift because she knows things will never be the same after this. Whatever tomorrow brings, there’s no going back from this. Allison won’t be able to ignore the way Lydia makes her heart pound, not anymore, not when she’s had her in her bed.

Then, there is blood. Allison jerks back as the taste of copper floods her mouth, only to find the soft scab forming on Lydia’s lower lip has broken, dripping blood across her pale skin.

“Shit,” Allison hisses, chest heaving, “Sorry.”

Her voice sounds about as wrecked as she feels. Her head is spinning, or else she would offer her a napkin or a shirt or the nearest sock discarded on the floor.

Lydia licks at her lip with her tongue, sighs, “Everything just has to go wrong, huh?”

Allison laughs, feels her cheeks flush as she stares at Lydia, her heart running so fast it may just burst inside her chest.

Lydia smiles indulgently at her, wincing as the movement cracks her lip even more. She presses the collar of her shirt against the wound, sighs, “You have to get some sleep anyway.”

She doesn’t argue, despite every cell in her body demanding she do nothing but trace Lydia’s skin with her fingertips. They fall asleep clutching each other, and it’s the best sleep Allison’s had in years.

She wakes up to Lydia humming in the kitchen, the smell of bacon wafting through the apartment. That’s not as interesting as the eight missed calls and three voicemails from a number she doesn’t recognize, but she doesn’t even need to listen to them when she sees the text from Stiles.

_“Satomi’s been murdered.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Check out this amazing picspam Emily (@allyasavestheday) made me for my birthday!!!
> 
> [HERE](http://kantocandy.tumblr.com/post/183111258589/g-taire-something-done-right-by-candyvan)
> 
> Thanks for reading!! Let me know what you think and if there's anything that can be improved upon. I know this is sensitive subject matter and I would love to know ways I could potentially handle it better. :)

**Author's Note:**

> NOTE::: the implied/referenced rape/non-con tag is added only in reference to discussions around forced prostitution and sex trafficking. There will NEVER be on screen rape/non-con. 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Please share your thoughts below and let me know if there is anything wrong or offensive. Please don't hesitate to correct me. This is a delicate subject matter. Thank you for your help!


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